


When It Rains, It Pours

by ashkazora



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by The Umbrella Academy, Keith & Lance (Voltron) Friendship, Keith (Voltron) is a Good Friend, Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Manipulative Lotor (Voltron), Quintessence (Voltron), The Umbrella Academy AU no one asked for, quintessence powers, the paladins have quintessence powers babey, well. not au. more inspired.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 35,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28854243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkazora/pseuds/ashkazora
Summary: When the Paladins of Voltron begin to develop quintessence-based powers thanks to the bonds with their Lions, Lance struggles to cope with the fact that everyone but him has these powers.However, when a mission goes awry and leads Lance to a mysterious stranger who's oddly sympathetic to his struggles, Team Voltron are pushed to their limits as secrets threaten to tear them apart.
Relationships: Keith & Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 45
Kudos: 92





	1. a song in eleven parts

**Author's Note:**

> So, new fic, eh?
> 
> Let's pretend that I'm not mashing my two favourite comfort characters into one for this fic.
> 
> **Timeline Notes: Takes place after season 2, in an AU where Shiro did not go missing.**

> ### Chapter One - A Song In Eleven Parts

There was something rather peaceful about the Castle of the Lions in the middle of the night. 

A faint hum reverberated in the sterile, white metal walls of the castle, the only noise present at this time. When it was this late at night, the only person awake was usually Lance.

The Caste of Lions was practically his playground in the early hours.

In his room, Lance began to prepare for his usual nightly ventures around the Castle. Dressed in his blue paladin robe, pyjamas, and fluffy Blue Lion slippers, he slung a large, black leather case over his shoulders, letting it hit his back with a soft _thud._ He flinched as the sound reverberated around the room, but calmed down as it wasn’t loud enough to wake his neighbours.

Sneaking out was easy. Almost too easy. Though that was to be expected, when the other paladins were drop-dead exhausted from their group training session that day. 

_The one he wasn’t allowed to join._

Lance’s knuckles whitened as his fingernails dug into the meaty part of his palm. 

There was something that built deep within his gut, dark and festering and something Lance wanted to ignore for as long as possible. It wasn’t normally like him to bottle things up or push his feelings down, but the last six months have, well, _changed_ things.

Shaking his head, Lance tried to rid himself of those thoughts. His bangs flop from side to side, successfully distracting himself with sufficient stimulation. 

With that, Lance began his newest mission: sneaking out of his room without the others noticing. The loudest sound he made was the whoosh of the automatic door to his room, yet even that was rather quiet. Once the door closed behind him, all he had to do was walk down the centre of the corridor so as to not trigger any of the others’ automatic doors or _possibly_ wake them up.

It wasn’t easier said than done. It was easy, full-stop.

Years of sneaking out of the Galaxy Garrison to go to the local town for cheap pizza, an arcade experience, or even a chance to get into a nightclub (something he never was able to pull off. His babyface never came in handy) gave Lance enough experience to creep his way out of the living quarters and down the eerily dark hallways of the castle. The teal-accented lights overhead would faintly glow as he passed, but quickly turned off after a couple seconds. He never knew why this was the case - maybe it had to do something with the castle’s night cycle?

That was more up Coran’s alley, though, and he really only talked to Coran nowadays for one specific thing.

Wandering through the sterile corridors had a sort of calming effect on Lance. His mind always felt lighter, muscles less tight, as he traversed the needless hallways and maze-like interior of the castle. Long walks had always calmed him back on Earth - whenever he and his twin, Rachel, would have one of their many fights, their mother would always send Lance on a walk to the grocery store or down to the beach. And when he returned, no matter how much anger and vitriol he possessed always evaporated like a shallow puddle on a summer’s day.

Not only did his midnight stroll give him some time to _think,_ but also allowed for some exploration to be done into the many, _many_ rooms of the ship.

Fun fact: the castle had greenhouses. Plural. There were three in total that Lance had discovered, and he was sure that there were more on other levels. One day, in a different era thousands of years ago, they might have been flourishing with greenery and native flora. 

Nowadays, they were just as barren and lifeless as the majority of the castle.

Lance slowed down his walk, peering into a room. On his way to his destination, he always passed the smallest greenhouse. A couple months back when the rest of the team were occupied, the blue paladin spent a day trying to tidy the place up and grow new crops. It was mildly successful with a few, allium-like plants growing sparsely in the dry soil. 

Ever since then, Lance did his best to keep them alive. Hell, he even named each one after a family member. 

There was Luis, the largest plant and also the first one he managed to not kill. Then there was Marco, the slightly smaller one, with flower petals that were much less uniformly grown. The skinniest, but one with the largest flower sphere was named Veronica, while a short one with petals on only one side was dubbed Rachel.

Every time he visited this room, it was like Lance was back with his family. If not in person, then in spirit. 

Assessing the flowers, he quickly decided they didn’t need any watering. _For now._ Though they might need a little bit in the coming days. 

_I will come back to you,_ Lance though, with more resolve than he had ever mustered before. He _would_ return to earth. To his family. 

Whatever it took.

And, _oof,_ wasn’t that a bit of a mood-killer. Lance ducked out of the room before his thoughts turned sour once again, and silently bid his plant family goodbye. 

Case still in hand, the paladin hastily made his way through the last part of his trip, passing numerous dust-covered rooms and forking hallways. Lance wove in and out of the labyrinth of corridors, passing the abandoned freezer room and shooting range he found a couple months ago. 

And then, then the hallways started widening. The once low ceilings expanded into something taller, out of reach even if he jumped. Only a couple steps later was Lance faced with one of the most unassuming doors in the whole castle. It was only around eight feet high and half that in its width, accentuated with stereotypical teal lighting, yet it held one of the greatest things Lance cherished.

As the doors opened in front of him, Lance was greeted with the sight of the universe. 

Starry galaxies and watercolour nebulas splashed the expanse of the room. Glittering stars seeped to dapple the walls with their blinding lights; clusters of shining specks faded in and out of the background. Thousands of constellations greeted Lance’s eyes, glowing across the view.

_Ah,_ the observatory. 

Lance’s favourite room. 

It was where he spent most nights nowadays, draped in a blanket and sleeping beneath the stars. It had a certain grandeur to it - the ceiling was even higher than the training room; faux-marble pillars endowed with gorgeous embellishments of patterns and lions decorated the corners of the room. In the centre of the room, the floor had been debossed to create a circular seating area; a u-shape that opened up to a lower level.

And then, as the feature of the room, the back wall was made entirely of glass that exposed the surrounding galaxies.

Like every single night since he had found the room, the sight took Lance’s breath away. 

It was…

_...beautiful._

More gorgeous than any sight on Earth. Every night was a different sight; some days were filled with pastel nebulas in cyclic spirals, where others had vast galaxies painted the darkest of tones. Some nights had billions of stars, twinkling back at him like shining grains of sand, while other nights were devoid of even the slightest hint of light. There was only one similarity in the view Lance witnessed every night - it was always different.

Staring out the window always made Lance feel a little less lonely. His friends were the constellations he christened and the dying stars he watched go by. The universe was dark, deep, and went on forever, yet the blue paladin found solace within the planets made out of the same iron as him.

If Lance really thought about it, he and the desolate stars above had a lot in common.

He strode slowly over to the small depression where woven blankets were haphazardly strewn across the seating area. When he had first discovered this room while exploring almost a half year back, Lance knitted a couple of blankets to keep in the observatory after he kept on accidentally falling asleep while watching the stars and waking up cold. _Oops._

Walking over to the seats, Lance somehow felt lighter with every step closer. Beneath the glittering constellations he felt at home, more so than he did in his own room.

As he reached the seating area, he kicked a couple blankets to the side and placed his case down on one of the seats. He would have time to snuggle later, but first…

A faint smile played on Lance’s lips as he unzipped the case, revealing a carved, wooden guitar nestled within soft fabric. The glaze on top of the sleek mahogany reflected the galaxies above and made the instrument seem as if it was airbrushed with a thousand shining stars. 

And just like the day he bought it, Lance couldn’t help but stare at his prized possession in awe. 

He had gotten the guitar at a Swap Moon a couple months after the Blue Lion had jettisoned them into space. It was love at first sight the moment he laid eyes on it through the windows of some off-brand Earth shop. The Unilu there had asked for his first born in exchange but hey, it wasn’t like he would see the dude ever again. And so, for the small price of his firstborn, 50 GAC, and a tiny Balmeran crystal Lance had pocketed from the planet, he had himself a genuine Earth instrument. 

Carefully, the blue paladin picked up the guitar and gently fingered the strings. A faint note echoed throughout the bare room. 

Lance sighed.

With a deep breath, he began to play. 

** ༄༅ **

It was seven months ago, the team’s third mission to a Balmera, and their second time on Shay’s planet specifically. While on the other side of the universe liberating other planets, a Galran fleet had taken advantage of Team Voltron’s busy schedule to try and recapture the Balmera in the name of Zarkon. Of course, in the usual fashion, the team didn’t receive the distress signal until after the Balmera had been invaded.

Fun times. 

A quick aerial assault using Voltron had quickly demolished all Galran ships that had dared to threaten Shay and her family. However, the Blue Lion’s sonar ray revealed hundreds of Galra foot soldiers still in the tunnels deep within the Balmera, continuing their attack upon the vulnerable Balmerans. So, the Lions were ditched, and the paladins entered the tunnels on foot.

Lance remembered how dark, how _cold_ it was in the tunnels. The walls seemed to close in on him, suffocating them with their low ceilings and impenetrable stone barriers. He briefly thought back to that story he heard back on Earth, where some miners were stuck in a cave for two weeks. One misplaced shot, one wrong step, and he could have been in the same position. 

Yet his barely-there claustrophobia hadn’t stopped him from defending the planet with all of his energy. 

Shiro had split the team up - Lance, Pidge, and Hunk in one group, and he and Keith in another. They were to take opposite directions, with the former group heading towards where more of the Balmerans were, and the latter towards the majority of the Galran soldiers. It was a fairly solid plan all things considered, yet if there was one thing Lance had learned during his time in space, it was that even the best laid plans always went awry.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Immediately, he, Pidge, and Hunk were greeted with dozens of Galrans armed to the teeth with blasters and a bad aim. Every shot missed was another hit to the Balmera. As a conduit of the planet, Hunk began to look more and more sickly as the soldiers hit the Balmera.

Yet to everyone’s relief, the three paladins managed to plow down that wave of soldiers. Bodies had littered the ground, and so too had purple liquid. Lance had only learned later that the liquid was blood.

Everything was going alright, all things considered. The three were slowly making their way to a group of trapped Balmerans pinned by a battalion hell-bent on capturing and killing every last one of them. They were so close, so _close_ to the Balmerans, yet at the last moment Galran soldiers had streamed from every side, effectively pinning them in a small cavern.

Pidge was knocked out first; a stray blaster fire had hit her in the weak spot of her cuirass. Lance was next; without Pidge protecting his blind spot a soldier had snuck up on him, and threw him into a wall. The blue paladin remembered how bad his head spun, remembered how hazy his vision was. He must have screamed, because Hunk looked over his shoulder and his eyes--

Hunk’s eyes _glowed._

Somewhere above, the Yellow Lion let out a guttural _roar._

The ground shook from under them. Pillars of solid earth shot up from the ground, slamming the surrounding soldiers into the room. The cracking cacophony of bones and armour breaking filled the air with a white noise. 

It had been too much for Lance’s addled brain to handle. He passed out, but not before seeing the countless broken bodies on the ground covered in gravel and grime, surrounding Hunk like a halo of death. 

And then, nothing.

Not until he had woken up on the floor of the healing pod room, not a single person in sight. When Lance managed to stagger to the lounge room where everyone else was, apparently he wasn’t supposed to be released from the pods for another couple hours.

Oh, and also, Hunk had powers.

Well, not _powers,_ per se. 

Apparently, the Lions were conduits for quintessence, or so Allura claimed. The statement had meant nothing to Lance. Conduit? Quintessence? What were those things?

But then Allura had put it in layman’s terms: The Lions could conduct quintessence - the life force of the universe - as they too were made of it. They could also lend quintessence to their paladins.

Which was why Hunk was able to obliterate a battalion of Galran soldiers by manipulating the Balmera to crush them. The Yellow Lion gave some of his quintessence and somehow that wasn’t the weirdest thing Lance had heard during his time in space. Yet it was the way Allura phrased her explanation that had piqued his interest -- the _Lions_ were responsible for what Hunk had done.

How _crazy_ was that?

When Allura then explained that it usually happened only in times of great distress and not something the paladins could control Lance had tuned out real fast. It wasn’t like the rest of her explanation didn’t interest him, it’s just that he was, well, _tired._

Really tired.

Not only that, but something had nagged at the back of his mind, a small scratch he couldn’t help but to itch. 

Lance grew up on the wonderful mystique of fairytales and magic. No sooner as the epiphany hit him did he realise that he _too_ could wield this phantasmic power, that perhaps he too could become a vessel for Lion’s inordinate vigour. 

That power… would be _dangerous._

Thank _quiznak_ it couldn’t be controlled. 

He had shivered despite the lukewarm temperature. Maybe it was a late onset of the cryopod’s chill, yet the blue paladin didn’t feel cold. 

He was proud of Hunk for somehow unlocking this power, even though it seemed that others like Keith and Shiro had closer bonds with their Lions. So for that night, he ignored any other questions he had about quintessence and the mystical bonds they shared with the Lions of Voltron in favour of celebrating his best friend’s achievements. Lance even cooked him a pasta-bake dish that tasted nothing like pasta, but ten times better than food goo. Everything was fine. 

Everything was fine.

** ༄༅ **

Where Lance had begun with only single notes, he started adding chords and a coherent melody to his song. Obeying his fingers with vigour, his guitar sung with finely tuned notes of something distant, something sombre. 

Slowly but surely, his fingers found a steady rhythm and started playing something familiar. Lance’s body swayed slightly, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet to the slow tune.

Right then, the guitar felt like an extension of his body. 

The galaxies around Lance began to blur as he immersed himself in the music. Knowing the music almost off by heart, he closed his eyes and let muscle memory play.

** ༄༅ **

It was six months and three weeks ago. One week after Hunk had briefly channelled his Lion’s quintessence. It didn’t happen again.

Though, to be fair, they had been in the Castle for the entire week since, planning a raid of a Galran slave ship that Pidge had tracked down. It potentially had information on Matt and Dr. Holt, so Pidge had called the whole team into a meeting and asked (read: forced) them to go on her mission to retrieve the information that could lead her to her family. 

A standard Voltron mission, really. 

They had done this dozens of times with dozens of ships; infiltrating, disarming, and retrieving information became almost _too_ easy for the paladins. Yet with the introduction of a new variable which were the Holts, the stakes had been raised and tension hung thick in the air. Pidge had seemed desperate - too desperate - to go on the mission. Shiro too, but that wasn’t surprising.

In hindsight, that should have been the first sign of trouble.

Docking the cruiser, it was made immediately apparent that this _wasn’t_ a normal cruiser. The stench of magic, _dark_ magic, hung thick in the air. According to Keith, anyway.

It wasn’t until Hunk had stumbled upon the first Druid that Lance knew they messed up. 

As always, Lance had been paired with Hunk for the mission. This time however, Keith was with them and Pidge and Shiro were placed together. Hunk was in the lead, with Lance and Keith hanging behind to protect his back. Usually Keith would go ahead, but he had sprained his shoulder the night before while training and Shiro regulated him to the back with the blue paladin.

Only a couple minutes into the mission did Hunk start yelling. Lance remembered him and Keith rushing forward, only to be greeted with the sight of a Druid lying cold on the ground with dark purple oozing out of the many blaster-shaped holes in its body. Something smoky hung in the air, no doubtedly emitting from Hunk’s still active bayard. 

And that was only the start. 

From then on, the paladins had to weave in and out of corridors, straying almost completely from their original path to avoid running into any more Druids. Lance knew that no matter how much training they had done in the past, they were still too new, too inexperienced, to face a Druid on their own.

Only Shiro could have possibly stood a chance. And he… well…

He, Hunk, and Keith managed to get to the server room uninterrupted by Haggar’s forces before they heard Shiro _scream._ A pained shout had blasted from Lance’s comm, reverberating around his helmet in a sick melody of agony. Suddenly, the primary-coloured paladins were all in an unspoken agreement - they had to get to Shiro. Now.

Pidge wasn’t answering her comms. Neither was Shiro. 

Panic had bubbled in Lance’s throat, but he had to push it down for the mission. Abandoning his post, he had sprinted as fast as he possibly could to the other server room, where Shiro and Pidge were supposed to be. 

Not even bothering to remain covert, Lance ran more desperately than he had ever before, yet once he and the others arrived at the other server room neither Pidge nor Shiro was there.

Instead, they were greeted with the faceless masks of a Druid.

Like Lance said, he had the _worst_ luck.

Before it could react, Lance lifted his bayard and shot it once, twice, three times, before pausing. The Druid barely had enough time to summon its creepy energy ball before the plasma blasts hit its chest twice and forehead. Slowly, it fell to the ground with a sickening thud, before not moving again. Lance shot it three more times in the head behind its mask just to be thorough. 

Only when the Druid was undeniably dead did Lance realise that this… this _wasn’t_ the server room.

Instead of countless screens and panels littered with every kind of button under the sun (which were never colour-coded), the room was filled with rows of… plants?

Yeah, _plants._ Green, leafy vines dotted workbenches, each almost identical save for slight variations. And then - Lance looked to the other side of the room - the plants somehow grew wild, uncontrollable. Where the majority were pruned to around half a meter in height and spaced around the same distance from each other, the far left of the room had the plants spilling out of their pots and creeping towards the door. Their leaves were bigger, and so too were their thorns. If he looked closely, Lance could almost see them _pulsing._

A shiver had gone up Lance’s spine. 

He… he couldn’t _understand._ What had happened? Where was Pidge and Shiro?

What the _fuck_ were the Druids doing with _plants?_

Yet the boy didn’t have time to process what he was seeing as another, softer shout reverberated through the Galran base rather than his comms. Shiro and Pidge were somewhere else, and they had to get there before it was too late.

From behind him, Keith swore, “Shit! Where could they be?”

Lance shrugged. “No clue, dude. This ship doesn’t have the normal layout for Galra ships, so they could be anywhere.”

To that, the red paladin scowled. Perhaps that hadn’t been the right thing to say.

“Wait a minute,” furrowing his brows, Hunk stepped in front of them. “I think I can track Pidge and Shiro’s helmets, but it’ll leave our position open to anyone tracking us. If I track the signal and lead, do you guys think you could provide cover fire?”

“Hunk, you beautiful _genius!”_ Lance had exclaimed, fighting the urge to wrap his arms around the larger boy. “I’ll protect you with my life.”

Keith nodded, and the plan had been sealed.

It only took a couple seconds for Hunk to whip out a little divide he had stored in his armour’s utility belt, and another few seconds to pinpoint the location of Pidge’s helmet. The air around them became more desperate once Hunk announced that Shiro’s signal was offline.

Once the yellow paladin took off, Lance and Keith followed deftly behind. True enough to their word, any time a Galran soldier came across them almost immediately they were either cut down or shot - or both - courtesy of the two. 

Lance ran through the winding corridors, bayard at the ready. As the signal grew closer and closer the hammering at his chest became louder. A wailing dissonance of white noise buzzed in his ears, roaring to a crescendo from sheer proximity. And he could hear the other paladins. Lance was close, so _close,_ and with Hunk and Keith they could face any challenge the bastard Druids sent their way. For Shiro, they would have done anything. 

Yet when he had arrived at the room, everything was… _green._

Emerald-coloured crawlers sprawled the walls with their grand leaves, obscuring the dark metal walls. Stems of rigid ivy and thorny plants criss-crossed the room, covering the entire floor and most of the space with its dark, forestry brilliance. And in the centre of the green explosion was Pidge, her tiny body rigid and unmoving with a single hand outstretched.

  
  
Lance almost didn’t notice Shiro laying behind her, his body lying motionless like a marionette whose strings had been cut. But what he did see were the twisted, bleeding forms of a half-dozen Druids, strangled by the very plants they were experimenting on.

It was almost poetic, really, how they died. Though at the time the sight was too gruesome to think so. Lance didn’t even have to hear Hunk to know that the boy had vomited. The smell had already permeated in the air, barely masking the smoky scent of Druidic blood. 

Someone must have made a noise because Pidge slowly, _slowly,_ turned her head around to face them. And through her honey-brown lashes and cracked visor, her eyes _glowed-_

-the same colour as the very plants surrounding them. 

And Lance didn’t move- _couldn’t_ move. Staring into the endless pool of green, his whole body seemed stuck. Like a deer in headlights, he shook. Like a lamb in the eyes of a lion he froze. 

And then, the spell was broken. Shiro had groaned something pained and Lance remembered why he was there. 

_To save Shiro._

Though it looked like Pidge had already done just that.

If he was any less shellshocked, he would have realised that what had happened to Hunk just occurred again. 

Rushing forward, both him and Keith went to check on the broken body of their leader. The blue paladin remembered burns that smouldered through the weak points of Shiro’s armour, and the distinct smell of scorched flesh.

The moment the smell hit his nose he gagged. Lance did _not_ want to pull a Hunk but the way Shiro was looking, he just might.

After that, hours passed by in milliseconds. 

Lance vaguely remembered Pidge’s eyes dimming back to their honey hue and her legs shaking in exhaustion. He vaguely remembered helping Keith carry Shiro back to the castle, while on the way passing corridors with overgrown ivy encroaching on the metal walls and spearing through the torsos of long-dead Druids. And he somewhat remembered arriving in the Castle, dropping Shiro off in the healing pod room, and promptly collapsing in his own room. 

When he woke up, Lance immediately felt more refreshed, though there was an itch at the back of his mind that he just couldn’t reach. It wouldn’t go away, not even when he did his whole skincare routine and showed with the watcher on the hottest it could fathomly go.

It was only when he felt the familiar sensation of cold air down his back did he decide to go visit the Blue Lion.

Armed with his paladin armour, Lance barely took a step out of his room before Coran’s voice blared across the loudspeakers, informing everyone that they were to come to the mission planning room immediately. 

He scowled. _Of course_ Coran would pop in at the most inconvenient time. All Lance wanted to do was go to Blue and ask her _what the fuck_ happened the night before on their mission. But the McClain luck struck again. 

Abandoning his plan, he began his walk to Coran immediately, almost pettily not going above the speed of a brisk jog. By the time he reached the room, a quick peek in told him that the whole team was already there, even Shiro who must have come out of the healing pod sometime in the middle of the night. Taking a deep breath, Lance went to walk through the door, but something stopped him. A weight, almost. Something deep and dark and _cold._

_Brace yourself._

The words echoed in his mind, only for a moment, before the bitter cold left him and his body could finally move.

Brace yourself...? What did that _mean?_

No sooner as Lance walked into the room did he realise.

Welcoming him into the circle that the paladins and Allura had formed around the meeting table, Coran immediately launched into an explanation for what happened the day before. Apparently, he had left out a _little bit_ when first explaining quintessence to the team after Hunk’s mishap. 

Turns out, quintessence was _everything._ No, seriously. Quintessence was basically life force - it existed in everything and everyone. In a way, it was energy. Pure energy.

And it was stuff the Lions were powered by. 

One of the reasons Voltron was so _powerful_ even after thousands of years was because it ran off of pure, deadly energy. It used quintessence for its fuel, its weapons - everything. They also somehow generate the stuff naturally, so were self-sustaining and ran off clean energy.

From what little Lance remembered in the Garrison’s eighth grade environmental science course, sustainable energy for literally immortal warships was pretty cool. No wonder they could recover from those power-draining hits Zarkon’s witch loved to throw at them just with a little bit of time.

For some reason (Coran didn’t say, but he gave a _look_ that Lance knew intimately. He saw it in the mirror every day when he reminisced about the past - about the people he left behind) the Lions could use their pilot’s quintessence for many different things. But most importantly, was that the Lions could also give their paladins their own quintessence.

Which was exactly what happened with Hunk and Pidge.

“So,” Pidge had interjected, “is that why we can get random upgrades with our Lions? Like Lance’s sonic canon, or Hunk’s Lion armour?”

Coran nodded. “Precisely, Number Five. However, this is a whole new level of ‘upgrades,’ where the Voltron Lions are able to allow you lot to control their own quintessence.”

And _holy shit_ did that sound awesome.

“Does that mean…” Training off, Pidge’s eyes widened. 

“...we can control these quintessence power things?” Hunk finished the green paladin’s sentence, with as much enthusiasm as Lance felt. 

With another small nod of affirmation, the room basically descended into chaos. Everyone seemed to be talking at once - Lance included - causing the excitement in the room to grow considerably. It was only when Allura raised her gand, morphed to be three feet taller, and _stomped_ her foot as hard as he could on the ground that the chatter died away. 

“They’re not _powers.”_ Allura said in the same annoyed tone that she usually spoke in whenever the humans would get on her nerves. “It’s the ability to manipulate your Lion’s quintessence. This can only be done when the bond between a paladin and a Lion is incredibly close. At first I thought that this would only happen in dire circumstances, however….”. 

The moment those words had left the princess’s mouth, Lance had felt himself grinning. He and Blue were _tight._

“As of tomorrow, Coran and I will be running specific training sessions for both the green and yellow paladins,” Allura continued, inclining her head to Pidge and Hunk who nudged each other giddily. “To train their quintessence manipulation.”

If possible, Hunk was grinning even harder. Pidge almost had visible stars in her eyes. 

It was as if they forgot how much of a hardass Allura could be with training.

“And you three-” Allura turned to face Lance and the remaining paladins, “during these training sessions, I expect you to be bonding with your Lions. The ability to manipulate quintessence will be quintessential for future missions.” 

Lance had to stop himself from snorting at her word choice. He lifted his hand up in an affirmative, smiling wider at Allura’s disapproval.

“Ooh, I wonder who’s gonna be next,” Pidge piped up, eyes scanning the black, red, and blue paladins. 

Hunk already had opened his mouth before she even finished. “Shiro.” He said rather confidently. When Pidge cocked her head, he added, “He’s like, the most in tune with his Lion then everyone here! Of course it’s going to be Shiro.”

Seemingly ignoring the way Shiro’s face darkened to a strawberry-red hue, Pidge refuted, “Well, _duh,_ but what about Keith? Remember how the Red Lion basically travelled the galaxy to save him back on Taujeer?”

And, well, it _hurt_ that neither Pidge nor Hunk thought that Lance could be the next. 

“Well Blue and I are as thick as thieves. I’m sure we’ll be the next!” Lance proclaimed, with a swagger that only he possessed. 

Giving Lance a mischievous grin, Hunk smiled at his friend. “Yeah, yeah. Five GAC it’ll be Shiro.”

“Ha! Ten GAC it’s Keith who gets some sort of crazy fire powers next.” Pidge replied, an equally scheming expression on her face.

Lance had brought his hand up to his chest in faux hurt. “You guys are bananas. Fifteen GAC it will be me!”

Keith snorted, yet Shiro, as leader-ly as always, had patted him on the back in a motion that he thought was supposed to be reassuring.

“Whatever happens,” Shiro started, “don’t go running into danger in hopes that these powers will come to your aid. We don’t want you to get hurt.” While it was said to all of the paladins, Lance had a feeling it was specifically addressed to him and Keith.

Figures. They were the two most reckless paladins.

The weight of Shiro’s hand - metal hand - burned Lance’s shoulder. He... he _really_ wanted to be next. Maybe that could have proved that he was an integral part of the team, a vital cog in Voltron, and not just some run-of-the-mill sharpshooter. 

Maybe, just _maybe,_ if he got his powers next, Shiro would give him more attention. Or Keith would view him as an actual rival rather than a bother. 

Ha. He _had_ to be next. Blue and him were tight. Sure, the Red Lion had an undoubtedly deep connection with Keith, and the Black Lion had chosen Shiro over freakin’ _Zarkon,_ but Blue loved him! They talked most nights (usually in a mixture of visual images, broken English, and the occasional Spanish thrown in for good measure) and hell, he even slept in her cockpit on occasion when insomnia stuck hard.

Thinking about it, Lance _knew_ he’d be next. Mystical Lion powers, here he came!

Everything was fine. 

No matter how much Pidge or Hunk bet against him or with the two remaining paladins, he’d win. There was no stopping him, not now. 

Yet something still niggled at the back of his mind. _Brace yourself,_ Blue had said. What did she mean by that?  
  
By all accounts, nothing _bad_ had happened in the meeting. 

Then why did it feel like something was _off?_

** ༄༅ **

As the song began to creep into minutes rather than seconds, Lance’s fingers itched. Sure enough, the temp of his song began to increase, his fingers flying across the strings like albatrosses circling water. Like a hungry man he began to play, the guitar’s notes more enticing than any food he could ever fathom.

Now this… this was _cathartic._ Some people had training as their de-stressor, while others had baking, or tinkering, or meditation. For Lance however, it was merely strumming his fingers across the guitar’s strings, and letting the resulting melody envelop him in its beauty. Somehow he felt lighter, more at ease when playing. Perhaps it was due to it being an object from home, if not metaphorically.

He couldn’t help himself from getting lost in the music.

The notes grew faster, and so did the beating of his heart. Lance could hear it hammering in his chest, waiting in anticipation for the next sections of the song. But he couldn’t jump ahead, not skip any parts. 

After all, the best thing about a song was hearing it all together.

** ༄༅ **

It was six months, and a handful of days ago. The training sessions were going well. By now, Pidge could reliably call on most flora to do basic movements or manipulation, and Hunk could smash through solid stone, and was working on doing the same to metal. 

Everything was going well, and so in usual fashion Allura overworked the team to the bone with missions upon missions. Pidge and Hunk weren’t so happy with their extra training anymore. 

But it had paid off, and both started incorporating their quintessence manipulation manoeuvres into offensive and defensive strategies during missions. It works, usually, to varying success. 

At that point, it had been just over three weeks after Hunk’s ‘powers’ had officially awoken, and over two since Pidge had done the same. To say everyone was antsy for one of the remaining paladins to finally grasp the ability to manipulate quintessence was an understatement to say the least. Lance, for one, couldn’t _wait_ until he too could become a conduit to Blue’s indescribable powers.

Until that day came, he made sure to work on their bond. The very same bond that had strengthened dramatically in the past couple weeks. Blue was basically inside his head twenty-four seven, always sending him vague feelings of support and encouragement.

That was the only highlight in Lance’s overworked life.

As always, there was another day and another mission. This time it was to the peaceful planet of Yrestead, a beautiful, green planet in the Ignika quadrant that possessed shielding technology almost to the same standard as the Alteans. The monarchy had been struggling with an ongoing Galran invasion and begged the Voltron Coalition to aid them in exchange for an alliance.

Allura couldn’t pass off the opportunity to get her hands on that shielding technology.

After a gruelling two-day campaign in the sky where Voltron fought off an almost-endless wave of Galran fleets, and another equally tortuous three days of diplomacy, the team had almost secured an alliance with Yrestead. All they needed to do was to wait for the monarchy to sign some official-looking documents worded in a way that Lance could never fathom to understand.

Ah, politics. Always a blast.

Luckily for the weary paladins, Allura and Coran had decided to take the last couple days of alliance negotiations into their own hands and thankfully gave them the day off to do whatever ( _within reason_ , the princess had said with a side eye to lance. He winked back.) 

Yrestead was one of those planets that had a united population, and as such mostly resided in one large, _massive_ city the size of a small continent back on Earth. It was also one of the rare planets that possess both land and aquatic landmarks, most notably beaches and cliffs. Lance had jumped for joy at the prospect of having a beach day, only to deflate when Coran revealed that the water on Yrestead was so alkaline that swimming in it would burn their bodies.

The McClain luck struck again. 

Though he wasn’t too discouraged. After enough wheedling, Lance had managed to convince the rest of the team to go on a picnic with him, to a place he had discovered while exploring the many cliffs that overlooked Yrestead’s champagne sea. And so, Operation: Paladin Picnic began.

“Are you sure this is the right spot?” Keith’s voice rang throughout the clearing. “I don’t see the ocean anywhere.”

Lance flapped a limp wrist, shooting his hot-headed friend a roguish grin. “Of course it is! You just gotta wait and see.”

If Keith’s derisive groan meant anything, Lance was sure their picnic would go just fine. 

Hopefully, the others wouldn’t get too jumpy. If he remembered correctly, the spot was only a five-minute walk through a birch-like forest (if birch leaves were dark blue instead of green) and then another two minutes to get to a specific place on the cliffs. It was beautiful, truly.

The place was situated on one of the highest cliffs, where it overlooked the vast pastel sea that Yrestead offered. Not only that, but it was well-concealed enough that any inhabitants of the planet would probably have a hard time finding them and pestering them for autographs (that had happened _way too many_ times before.)

Piping up from behind, Pidge asked, “Do you actually know where we’re going?” 

Something about that statement had gotten on Lance’s nerves. Ever since Pidge started manipulating quintessence, her scepticism of his general intelligence had gotten a lot worse. “Of course I do!” He answered, shrilly, “You guys need to learn to _trust_ me, geez.”

“Don’t worry, Lance,” Shiro said. The blue paladin flinched slightly as his leader suddenly appeared beside him. For such a big guy, Shiro could certainly move quietly. “We trust you. We’re all just a little bit hungry.” 

And how could Lance have argued with that? He was just as hungry as well, if the grumbling in his stomach indicated anything.

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll get there faster if you guys hurry up.”

Those few words had managed to kick everyone into gear. Suddenly, what was a languid saunter became a brisk walk; the team were quickly making their way through the forest with a practised ease. Months ago, the journey would have sapped the energy out of Hunk, Pidge, and maybe Lance or Keith, but now they all moved with a strength built only by constant training.

Space had changed them. That was obvious.

Lance, nor anyone else, noticed it at first. A mild zephyr had been blowing through the forest, masking most noises with the rustling of the trees and the whistles in the wind. The breeze had made an otherwise stinking hot day somewhat tolerable; perfect for a picnic day and the reason why they all donned their casual clothes rather than their paladin uniforms

No one had expected the attack.

From the clearing, a blur of black armour popped out. There only seemed to be four attackers -. normally the team could have taken them without a sweat, though armed with only their bayards, Lance immediately felt a fear that he had not experienced since being knocked out on the Balmera.

“Lance, watch out!” Keith shouted. 

Lance turned around, transforming his bayard, just in time to deflect one of their assailant’s swords with his usual blaster now in hand. He pushed his bayard forwards causing them to stumble, and in a split second shot them in the knee. They went down like a sack of bricks; not dead, of course. His bayard was always set to stun unless in the direst of situations. 

Mentally he had cheered, though the moment was short lived as the assailant flipped back onto their feet, and began to charge at him.

He cursed.

“Keith!” Lance called out, eyes focused on the person. They swung their strange black-and-blue sword at him, to which he only barely managed to dodge. “Need a little help here!”

He risked a quick glance at the red paladin who was fighting sword-to-hand with another masked assailant. Though unlike the one Lance had been facing, Keith fought a much taller opponent with a strange whip-like appendage coming from their head. 

Lance almost got lost in his thoughts ( _was that chick’s ponytail sentient, or was it another hand?_ ) but the slash of a sword dangerously close to his face quickly brought him back to the present. While his assailant was still recovering from the swing he shot forwards, almost bumping into Keith.

“Watch it!” the red paladin shouted, kicking the ponytail-attacker square in the chest and sending them back a couple meters. Lance grinned.

“You watch it, mullet.”

But his words held no fire. Almost instinctively, Lance had straightened up so that he was directly behind Keith.  
  


They had assumed this position too many times in training; maybe it was time for them to try it out for real.

When the sword-wielding attacker charged again, both Lance and Keith were ready.

Fighting back-to-back with Keith was exhilarating. The two may have had a tenuous relationship outside of battle but once the fighting began, it was as if they were brothers in arms. Sure, they were an unorthodox pair with Keith wielding a sword and Lance with a blaster, yet together their combined offensive prowess was stronger than any other matchup. 

All too often did Lance find himself being lost in the fight when he was with the red paladin. Right then, all he could focus on were the armoured figures attacking him from the front, and the way Keith’s shoulders were pressed against his own. It was as if he was aware of nothing, but everything at once. He could _feel_ the way the muscles in Keith’s back moved, even before the boy went to strike at another soldier. He could hear both Keith and his own laboured breathing.

Truly exhilarating.

Maybe that was why Lance didn’t notice Shiro slowly being herded away from the group, and into the general direction of the cliffs.

At some point during the fight, he had spotted Hunk and Pidge dealing with a reptilian-looking assailant (judging only by their lizard-like tail), but not Shiro. Later, Lance would curse himself for being so thoughtless, so _forgetful_ of basic fucking training. 

But he did. And then the ponytail-attacker hit Keith, causing Lance to lose his footing and fall.

And then Lance’s head hit the ground, and through blurry eyes saw one final, hulking attacker slowly corner Shiro at the edge of the Yrestedian cliffs.

And then, Shiro's foot got closer and closer to the crumbling edge of the cliff. If the attacker pushed him back even a centimetre further-

"Shiro!" Lance had yelled, his shrill voice ringing around the clearing. On shaky arms he tried to stand up, to run and help his leader. At the same time, a menacing beeping noise sounded from the armours of his and Keith's attackers. Weirdly enough, that was enough to suddenly send them retreating back into the clearing, as if they were never there in the first place.

Yet the assailant attacking Shiro did not. They continued their assault, right until Shiro's back foot slipped on the unstable soil, and body fell back, then turned and ran back to join their retreating comrades.

_“NO!”_

It was as if Lance was watching in slow motion. He began to run - slow, too _slow_ \- right as Shiro teetered at the precipice of death. He had reached out, but it was too late. All he could grasp onto was air as the earth under Shiro’s hand crumbled, sending the man plummeting to the jagged rocks and ferocious waves below. He couldn’t look away; Shiro’s face was frozen in a scream as he fell further and further down.

Shiro was close - too close - to the water. He couldn’t survive, not the fall, nor the piercing rocks below. He was going to die, it was Lance’s fault, oh god-

And then-

And then Shiro was gone.

In a purple flash his body had disappeared mid-air. Just…

Gone.

Not even a second later, something crashed down into the ground behind him. A shiver went down Lance’s spine.

Slowly turning around, he felt shellshocked as he saw a body - Shiro’s limp body - sprawled across the teal grass, and a faint violet glow emitting from his eyes.

It… it couldn't have been.

Lance had seen him fall. He… he should have been dead, body broken on the jagged rocks or swept away at sea. Yet there Shiro laid, perfectly still and perfectly alive.

_What the fuck._

Later, when Lance looked back on it, he would realise that this wasn't quite surprising at all.

While he (and Keith) was too frozen to do anything, Pidge and Hunk had rushed forwards to steady their not-so-dead leader.

Shiro had moaned something unintelligible under his breath yet his body lay like a puppet without its master. As the light in behind his eyelids died down, Hunk began to lift their leader up and slung his prosthetic over his shoulders.

"We- we need to leave before they come back." The yellow paladin said, more resolute than Lance had ever heard. Yet he barely made out his friend's voice over the ringing in his ears.

_He had been too slow._

This was all his fault. If Shiro... if he didn't somehow magically _teleport,_ then...

Something from behind grabbed his hands, stopping the tremors Lance hadn't known were happening.

"It's fine. Shiro's safe." Keith had murmured, the firmness in his voice barely masking how scared he too was. "Let's go and help Hunk with hauling Shiro back to the Castle."

Nodding mutely, Lance could barely look at the others as he turned and slung Shiro's other - human - hand around his shoulders. (There was something about his and Hunk's position that felt all too familiar. Judging by the way Keith almost smiled as he watched the yellow and blue paladin haul their leader away, he must have thought the same thing.)

Lance hardly remembered the walk back to the central Yresteadian city where the Castle lay dormant. The methodical thumping of his and Hunk's feet onto the grassy earth provided a metronome-like rhythm, allowing him to get lost within his own thoughts.

Did Shiro manipulate quintessence?-

If only he was faster-

He almost _killed_ Shiro-

It only seemed like a minute later when they all arrived back outside the Castle of Lions, busied, battered, and worse for wear.

Coran had been in the Castle, fixing up the outdated intelligence database with the help of a couple Yrestedian scholars and politicians. Thank _quiznak_ he had been there. In no time at all the advisor set Shiro up in the med bay, gave the remaining paladins some bandages and assorted ointments for their wounds, and asked them to explain what had happened.

Keith decided to step up to that task.

The news of the sudden appearance and subsequent abrupt disappearance of their armoured assailants caused stress lines to appear on Coran's face, ageing him decades within a second. Yet the advisor simply ushered everyone (sans Shiro) out of the med bay and to bed, claiming that everything would be sorted out in the morning and that Allura would put the Castle in lockdown as to prevent them from being attacked again. 

Truth be told, Lance had barely remembered much after that. The shock of, well, _Shiro,_ and the events of that day was paying on repeat in his mind.

_Who were the people that attacked him? Why did they suddenly retreat?_

He didn’t even realise that he was walking in the corridors until a voice called behind him, “Are you okay?”

Lance had spun around, only to see Keith walking towards him, inactive bayard in hand.

“Uh, yeah,” He replied, “I’m just thinking.”

Keith had snorted at that. “Well don’t think too hard, okay?”

The blue paladin only bothered to respond with a hand gesture that would have surely gotten his mouth washed out with soap if he had been back on Earth.

“Today was pretty crazy, huh?” Keith started, his voice stilted. Obviously making small talk was hard for him.

Now _that_ was the understatement of the year. “Yeah, you think? Shiro somehow _teleported,_ dude.”

_“Crazy.”_ Keith repeated.

With that, the fog began to lift on Lance’s mood. Just with Keith’s presence he seemed to feel a bit lighter, a bit less down.

“So, Keith,” He started, a smug already forming on his face, “how does it feel to know that you’ll be the last one to get powers?”

Scoffing, Keith had crossed his arms and replied, “That’s rich coming from you.”

_That was rude,_ though Lance felt the same way with Keith. At that point, it had slowly become a race to see who would get it first. Would it be him or Keith? Lance felt as if their historic rivalry grew tenfold within a couple seconds.

"Good fighting today, by the way," he said, giving Keith a light punch on his arm. "But next time you get hit, make sure not to hit me too."

Keith threw his hands out, looking almost offended. "Hey! I couldn't help it!"

_"Uh huh,"_ Lance's words had been tinged with disbelief. _"Sure_ you didn't."

"I didn't!"

With that, their conversation devolved into meaningless squabbles, including a boastful proclamation from Lance that he could beat Keith in anything, including who would unlock quintessence manipulation first. It was cyclical, their bantering, though it did good to distract him from his past thoughts on Shiro, and how _antsy_ he felt.

Surely, he would be able to manipulate quintessence soon, _right?_

His bond with Blue was strong, _incredibly_ strong. Well, according to Blue anyway. Should he be able to use her quintessence now?

Suddenly, a cool, comforting sensation brushed against his spine. A phantom feeling of pleasant drafts on a warm summer's day had flown through Lance's mind, calming his agitated thoughts.

He had smiled at that.

_Thanks, Blue._

Of course his Lion would comfort him. It had to be a matter of time before he too could do the same that Hunk, Pidge, and now, apparently Shiro could.

He would have to visit Blue tonight and ask her about how he could go around unlocking this ability.

Though before Lance could think about it too much, he heard footsteps sounding behind him, sending echoes throughout the metal corridors. He and Keith turned around, only to be greeted by Pidge and Hunk.

"C'mon guys, catch up!" Pidge crowed. She had a certain smirk on her face that Lance had recognised as her 'I've just eavesdropped on your conversation' face. "Hunk and I have been able to fuck around with quintessence for _years_ now. What have you guys been doing?"

Snorting, Lance strode over and ruffled the girl's hair. " _Years_ , huh? Who would have thought our resident genius sucked at knowing time."

Pidge had swung her arm back to hit him, but he managed to jump back right in time to avoid the blow.

"It's a shame you can't come to training with us," Hunk joined in, "It's actually really interesting learning how to manipulate our Lion's quintessence! Did you know-"

"Nope." Keith interjected, popping the 'p.' "No spoilers."

Raising an eyebrow incredulously, Lance stared at the red paladin weirdly. _"Spoilers?!_ You're kidding me, right?"

But Keith had just shrugged at that. "Whatever. I'm gonna go train for a bit. See you guys in the morning."

The other three paladins barely had enough time to wave goodbye before Keith walked past them and away from their sleeping quarters. Hunk and Pidge exchanged a bewildered glance. 

Even after months together, none of the Garrison Trio had truly gotten used to Keith's eccentricity. (Though, to be fair, the same could be said vice versa.)

"Welp, in that case I'm going to go talk with Blue." Lance said, "Goodnight, guys!"

Both Hunk and Pidge gave him an enthused 'goodnight!' back; the blue paladin turned on his heel and began walking to the Lion's hangars. Yet the day's events had caught up with him, and in his tiredness, he had accidentally made a couple wrong turns.

And instead of ending up in Blue's hangar, he stumbled across an abandoned observatory.

** ༄༅ **

As the tempo quickly changed from a moderate tempo to _presto,_ Lance’s hands shook.

Narrowing his eyes, the blue paladin strummed his guitar with a renewed vigour, yet couldn’t stop the small, almost minute delay in between some notes. It was barely audible to the common listener, though he wasn’t a common listener.

Lance knew this song too well, yet every single time this particular section caught him off guard. The sudden switch caused him to fumble, only for a second, yet that was all it took for his control to go out of the window. His movements became erratic; elbow waving separate from his wrists and nose crinkled in frustration. Eyesight growing hazier, Lance _tried_ to focus, _tried_ to wrangle the song back under control, _tried-_

A discordant note rang through the room. Lance winced.

** ༄༅ **

It was six months ago. Almost on the dot, though time dilation made the precise date difficult to track. Time, in general, was quite fluid in space.

Like always Team Voltron were being worked to the bone. They had bills to pay and mouths to feed, if bills to pay were planets they had to free and mouths to feed were alliances to make. Every day was another mission and, well, the team was _tired._

Even more so now that Allura had started piling up quintessence manipulation training sessions on their plates, which led to Hunk, Pidge, and now Shiro quite frequently passing out at the dinner table. So when a mission came around that only required a small number of paladins, Keith and Lance were usually the ones voluntold to go.

How… _fun._

And that was the exact reason why he and Keith were stuck on a snowy planet in the middle of a blizzard, with nothing but their undersuits and bayards as protection. 

“A-are.. are we there yet?” Lance said, his teeth chattering in the frigid weather. Allura just _had_ to send them to a random, backwater, _snowy_ planet. 

Sure, send the person who had only lived in sub-tropical and briefly arid climates. Truly a great decision. _Thanks, Allura._

The Princess wanted them to check out on a random distress signal coming from a planet (Lance didn’t remember the name - he may or may not have slept through the mission briefing), the very same planet that supposedly had no sentient life on it. The small battalion of abandoned Galran fighter ships in the planets’ atmosphere was more than enough cause for Allura to send them down just in case and scout out the signal.

Though the most surprising thing about the mission? Nothing went wrong. _At first._

They weren’t attacked by random Galra. There were no secret inhabitants of the planet out to kill them. Hell, even the Red Lion survived the descent into the snowy planet and despite her weakness to all things cold and watery. 

Unfortunately, the little tracker device-thingy that Pidge made to track the distress signal had led them to a system of narrow chasms indented in the ground that of course, in typical Voltron luck, were too small for the Lions to go into. And so, Lance and Keith had to park their Lions out the front, manually climb down into the chasms, and track the signal - all without their armour (unfortunately, they had to abandon it halfway through. The chasm had too many narrow tunnels that just couldn’t fit them with their armour on.)

Oh, and the only way to track the signal was with a small device Pidge had made, that cut out every time a particularly strong gust of wind came billowing through the divide.

“Stop a-asking me that, L-Lance.” Keith had replied, irritation thinly veiled by his own voice stammering. Unsurprising, considering the red paladin also lived in Texas and Arizona for most of his life - hot, desert climates without much snow if any. 

Despite being semi-sheltered from the snow in the chasms, cool air still blew from above and through the narrow channel, creating an almost wind-tunnel effect that made the temperature even cooler.

_Fun._

Lance must have asked Keith one too many times if they were there yet, as the boy’s face morphed into a snarl. 

“We’ll be t-there when the machine says we a-are!” The red paladin shouted

Lance had let out a derisive snort as he replied, “I-I think the... the thing’s broken, dude.” 

To that Keith scoffed, briefly letting a protective hand go of his midsection to gesture something, before quickly slapping his arm back once the cold hit. “Pidge w-worked on it. Her stuff n-never breaks.”

Lance raised a frostbitten eyebrow and cocked his neck slightly, revealing a small, choppy section of raised scar tissue below his jaw. It was a reminder of the time their resident genius’ upgrades on their paladin suits went awry, and he had suffered the consequences. Immediately, Keith’s jaw audibly shut. 

“Yeah... w-well...”

A deadpan stare shut the red paladin up again. 

They walked in a chilly silence for a couple more minutes, before Lance had decided to break the tension between them. 

“So, d-do you reaction we’re close?”

Rolling his eyes (though he didn’t think was unkindly), Keith replied, “Remind me to never go on a road trip with you.” And then, as an afterthought, added, “we’re l-like, a couple hundred, uh, meters away.” 

_“Christ.”_ Lance groaned. “D-don’t suppose y-you have a... a heater?” 

Without warning, the wind began to pick up around them. Where they were once relatively sheltered from snowfall in the chasm, a change in the gusts caused flurries of pearl-white powder to start blowing through the narrow channels. The whistling in Lance’s ear began to grow shriller in tandem with the temperature seemingly dropping. 

“I _wish.”_ Keith grumbled back, his voice almost lost to the wind. “Hang on, we’re almost there.”

There was so much resolve in the red paladin’s words that Lance almost believed him. 

_Almost._

But it hadn’t been enough to stop his legs from collapsing underneath him. 

_“Lance!”_ Keith had screamed. The gales screamed louder. 

He couldn’t answer. Lance’s whole body had felt like lead - heavy and uncontrollable. Faintly, he realised that he wasn’t shivering anymore. Something cold permeated his undersuit’s legs, staining his skin with a icy-sharp cold.

He tried to mumble something, but his mouth felt like it was filled with cotton balls. Lance’s body swayed forwards, only to be stopped by a pair of hands. _Warm_ hands.

_“...what’s wrong?!”_

Lance frowned. He heard Keith say something, though the exact words were as muddled and murky as dirtied ice. 

“C… cold,” is what he _tried_ to say, but Lance couldn’t hear his own voice.

The next amount of uncountable time passed by in snippets of freezing agony with only brief parts of clarity. Thousands of tiny icicles seemed to prick at Lance’s skin, shredding every nerve and leaving him like an exposed wire - raw and painful. He felt hot- no, cold- no, hot again. The cycle of blended temperatures never stopped, continually wreaking havoc on what little coherence he had.

The only solace that had been given to him was a comforting embrace that encompassed most of his torso. At some point in time, something must have picked him up, as Lance distantly realised that he was curled up in an odd position, with a warm sensation pulsating against half his body.

If he had been more coherent, perhaps he would have heard Keith’s shouts. 

For too long Lance drifted in and out of consciousness, falling asleep only to be awoken by the screaming wind. At first only his toes and fingers were numb, but soon enough the sensation slowly crept further until he could barely feel the wind anymore. 

Lance started feeling the gales against his body even if the whistling of the wind didn’t grow louder. The frostbite on his skin had begun to thaw, giving way to a scorching heat, _burning_ every inch of exposed flesh. Fiery orange hues shone through his eyelids.

Maybe he had screamed. Lance sure as hell didn’t remember. 

What he did remember was slowly, _slowly,_ falling into an endless ocean of white noise where every time he resurfaced, another fiery hot wave would push him under.

And then, something had lifted him up. He blinked.

And then, he was in a dark cockpit, red-glow highlights illuminating a panicked figure. He blinked again.

And then, Lance woke up.

It took him a few tries to open his eyes against the stickiness that seemed to have sealed them shut, and a couple more tries for Lance to register where exactly he was. White walls… teal lights… a half-dozen powder-white beds arranged in a row.

Swaying slightly, the blue paladin frowned. Why was he in the infirmary room?

Oh, right. The mission. The snow.

_Keith._

Faintly, Lance flexed his fingers and toes, counting each one. He had seemed to be in one piece but how? How had he survived?

With every passing second, he gained more and more control of his body, until there was a faint _whoosh_ and he fell face first into a hearty embrace, face squished in someone’s chest.

“Lance! You’re finally awake!” Someone had said, their voice sending vibrations across his body.

Lance groaned at the loud sound, pressing his face further into their chest and closing his eyes if it would help him escape the sudden assault on his senses. “Wake me up later,” he groaned as loud as his still-recovering voice could.

The person laughed something hearty. Before Lance could open his eyes again, they skilfully picked him up in a way that a dog owner would with a tiny chihuahua and placed him down on what felt to be a chair.

The moment his skin hit the cold metal, Lance’s eyes flew open. Scenes of coldsnowwind _Keith_ flashed before his eyes, before he could properly register who was there.

He blinked once. Twice. And then--

“Hunk?”

The yellow paladin’s serious face had split into an encompassing grin. “I’m glad you’re okay, buddy.” 

Hunk’s smile was infectious, and soon enough Lance felt him mirroring his friend. “Me too,” he replied. 

And, well, Lance really was glad that he was okay. Ending up in the cryopod after a mission was always something serious. For a moment guilt began to claw its way into his stomach, silently berating him for making Hunk worry. He had done it too often - making Hunk worry, that is.

He could try and blame it on bad luck. Once was always a coincidence, twice a pattern, but the umpteenth time he had been hurt and required a cryopod.

It was surprising that Hunk’s heart hadn’t given out yet.

“I’m… sorry,” Lance gazed at the ground, not wanting to meet his friend’s eyes. “I shouldn’t have gotten hurt… I-”

Cutting him off was the same pair of meaty arms, squeezing the life out of him in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring hug.

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” Hunk had said, a dark glare flashing across his face. "It's not your fault that you were hurt. It would have happened to Keith, too, if he didn't..."

Lance sighed. "He managed to control his quintessence, didn't he?"

That was the only suction to why he was still alive that made sense, really. Somehow he had survived frigid temperatures and most likely some form of hypothermia, yet from what his spotty memory suggested, Keith didn't even blink at the deadly cold.

The Lions had no access to the chasm that he and Keith were in. Their communication devices were too disrupted by the gales to send any distress signals back to the castle.

And Keith had felt _warm._

Really warm.

Maybe it was Lance's memory playing a trick on him, but he was sure that the older boy had felt so inviting and toasty despite the frostbite that he had experienced.

That had led him to two separate conclusions: One, the cold seriously messed with his memories and he had hallucinated everything, or two, Keith had managed to control quintessence and keep him alive.

And that really wasn't a stretch, all things considered. The other managed to unlock this ability in times of need (check) and their resulting abilities reflected their Lion's own capabilities (double check).

Before he could think about it anymore, Hunk's posture stiffened slightly, already giving away what the answer was.

"Yeah, he did," Hunk murmured, looking at him with something Lance refused to acknowledge. "When you guys didn't check in Pidge and I managed to convince Allura to let us come down and check on you guys. We saw the Red and Blue Lions circling where you guys were and when we got there, well..."

The lines around Hunk's eyes grew larger than the chasms Lance had been in.

"Yeah?" He prompted, squeezing his friend's hands in reassurance.

"Well, you were cradled in Keith's arms, so to speak. And he was, uh, smoking?"

Lance had blinked. That was _not_ the response he expected. "Smoking...?"

"Yeah, _smoking._ Like a fireplace, except without the fires. After we rescued you two and put you in the cryopods, Allura ran some tests and figured that he manipulated the Red Lion's quintessence to basically stay warm."

_Damn._ _That was... well…_ His thoughts trailed off.

"Where is Keith, then? I guess I need to thank my savior." Lance said, a hint of humour slowly creeping into his voice.

Hunk slowly released him from his bear hug, and placed the blue paladin back down on the chair. "I called everyone down right before you were released. I think Shiro, Pidge, and Keith were doing some training, so they should be here soon."

_So Hunk had ditched training to come here._

To that, Lance felt something warm burn in his chest. Hunk... he had been a good friend. A really good friend. Hunk was there whenever he needed to rant about Keith's ugly haircut, or vent about homesickness. Hell, he had been there for him long before space, but even at the Galaxy Garrison as well. Since second year they had been unlikely roommates, being paired together after Hunk's original roommate dropped out and after Lance's requested a transfer.

If there was one thing Lance was grateful for, it was that Hunk hadn't distanced himself in space, even though his time with Pidge had slowly eclipsed the time Hunk spent with him.

"Thank you," Lance had whispered, and that was enough to make Hunk's eyes start watering. Soon enough, he felt his own eyes do the same (But that was over post-cryopod weirdness, and totally not his completely platonic, all-encompassing love for his best friend.)

"You don't have to thank me. That's what friends do."

"And yet, you're the only one here," Lance countered.

Hunk had opened his mouth, presumably to speak, when a set of heavy footfalls sounded through the door.

"You're not dead!" Came from the small figure that had just entered the room. Suddenly, it began to run towards Lance in a green, frenzied blur, with the blue paladin suddenly assaulting with a handful of Pidge. "I can't believe you woke up when we weren't here." She then proceeded to punch him on the shoulder in a very Pidge-Like fashion.

"I did remind you, remember?" Hunk cut in, walking forward to try and pry off the girl from Lance's body. After a couple seconds of resisting, Pidge went limp in the yellow paladin's grasp, and allowed herself to be carried away.

With all that commotion, Lance didn't realise another person had come in with her.

"So you're alive, huh?" came the dry voice of Keith, arms crossed as usual. Lance's head snapped over to him; the remaining tension from his stint in the cryopod practically melted at seeing him.

"Yeah, and I hear it's thanks to you." Lance said, and then, trying his best as to keep a straight face, added, "I heard you cradled me in your arms, again."

If there was one thing the blue paladin excelled at, it was knowing exactly what buttons to push to make Keith act in all hilarious ways. It was almost predictable the way Keith flushed hotly and had indignantly stalked forward. "And so what if I did! Are you going to remember it this time?"

Lance shrugged. "Maybe I'll forget, just for you."

In the early days of Voltron their conversation would have undoubtedly turned into some sort of an argument, but that was long (red: a few months) ago. Since the team had rendered Zarkon immobile for a long enough period that they wouldn't have to worry for a while, he and Keith had found a shaky ground in which they could almost get along. Almost.

"If you forget, I swear to god I'll make you remember." Keith scowled, his nose scrunching. Yet Lance was too distracted by the way the flush on Keith's face had seemingly spread to his hands, and then--

Lance yelped, flinching back as flamed had appeared on Keith's fingertips. They were small, tiny really, barely big enough to cause any lasting damage. Though the way it suddenly appeared...

Violet eyes widening in realisation, Keith shot him an embarrassed grimace as he started shaking his hands up and down. Once he stopped, the flames were gone, leaving only a thin layer of black dust on the boy's hand.

"Shit, _sorry,_ I haven't really got that under control."

Yet Lance wasn't wholeheartedly listening. The image of flames /appearing/ played on repeat in his head.

Hunk confirming that Keith had managed to manipulate quintessence was one thing but seeing it? Seeing it made it all too real.

And that meant...

...that meant Lance was the last one left.

"You're finally living up to your hothead name, aren't you?" He had grinned, trying to shake himself out of those thoughts. "When I unlock all that quintessence nonsense, let's hope I'll be able to cool you down, eh?"

That hadn't been a joke, not really. More of an observation.

Pidge's Lion was connected to nature, and so was her quintessal ability. Hunk's Lion was innately connected to the earth and ground, which too was reflected in his manipulation. The trend carried onto Keith and Shiro as well.

It was only a matter of time before Lance did the same. Maybe he could do cool stuff with water, like Blue did. Or maybe it was something to do with sound like Blue's sonic cannons.

Whatever it was, Lance had been so sure that just like Keith, he'd be able to manipulate quintessence soon. The time between each person got smaller and smaller; who knew, maybe the Castle would explode tomorrow, and he would save everyone.

_Heh._ _That had been a nice thought._

“You're taking your time with this, aren't you?” Pidge grinned, wriggling out of Hunk's grip only so she could elbow him right in the chest with a force great enough to almost wind him.

Before Lance could respond, Hunk had chimed in with a, “It’s payback for all the times you came late to training.”

Lance scoffed. “Just you wait,” he said, scrunching up his nose, “For all we know, the longer it takes, the stronger the powers are!” To that, he waved his arms in emphasis.

“That, or your abilities are as lazy as you are.” From behind him Keith muttered, though he said it with a warm smile. 

Lance _wanted_ to frown at the red paladin’s words but couldn't. Keith had _saved_ him from near-certain death. That warranted at least a couple days of no bickering, or even a week of not calling him ‘mullet.’

Detaching himself from the chair, Lance strode over to him, and without thinking of Keith’s personal boundaries of his obvious lost love for physical contact, gave the boy a hug. 

_“Thank you,”_ Lance murmured, loosening his embrace slightly as he felt Keith’s muscles freeze, “for saving me.”

Yet despite his love of physical affection, Lance… couldn’t feel content. Even though Keith could control flames, even though half- and full-blooded Galra naturally ran hot, the only thing he felt was a bitter cold crawl up his skin. 

It felt....

It felt like jea--

And then he stepped back and turned around without watching Keith’s expression. Honestly, he didn’t want to linger any more, nor did he want to stay with his friends at that moment.

“I’m still feeling a bit sick from the cryopods, so I think I’ll head to bed,” Lance said, turning his head only just enough so that he could see Keith and Hunk out of the corner of his eye. “Night guys!”

Without waiting for anyone else to say something he walked out the door, giving a small wave over his shoulder, and began to make his way to the observatory. 

And the moment his teammates were out of sight, Lance had let his smile slowly fall.

In that moment, it had felt like he lost a game he never knew he was playing. And like always, he came in last.

** ༄༅ **

Even though the melody began to slow, Lance’s heart still beat at a crescendo.. 

He was so caught up in the song that he barely realised it was over until the final note was played. It rung throughout the room, dark and final like the last bell chime of a clocktower at midnight. 

As the last note faded, his breath caught in his throat.

With no music left, colours began to seep from the walls until Lance was left in a cold, bare room, with nothing but a fluid painting of a sight he’d only see from a million miles away, and an ancient room filled with too many yet not enough memories.

There he stood, basked in the light of a million stars. In silence.

Alone.

Of course, why wouldn’t he be?

It was late - too late. No one would be awake now, not even Keith who tended to to stay up training, or Shiro who had trouble falling asleep. They were all probably in bed, too tired from today’s training session to even entertain the possibility of staying up late.

Luckily, he sat out of training. Why would he even bother going, if all the team were doing was practising their new, fancy powers, something Lance _still_ hadn’t controlled. 

What was the point of going somewhere when you were useless?

It was the only training sessions that he could miss without Allura getting him in trouble for it.

Of course, he didn’t need any pity. It was on days like these when Lance had true freedom. Nothing to do except for his usual, easy to complete castle chores, no external obligations nor missions. 

He had carved out the observatory as his own, marking it as the place he’d go whenever _this_ happened.

Lance sighed.

Staring at the distant stars, the blue paladin couldn’t help but feel some sort of _longing._ Why couldn’t he be like one of them - an ethereal, undying ball of rock and stone that were removed from mortal needs. _They_ didn’t have to eat. _They_ didn’t have to wake up each day to the same group of people that tolerate them at best. _They_ didn’t need to worry about anything, not even their eventual deaths.

A star was not like a human. 

Time for them probably flew by in a way Lance could never begin to comprehend. The six months since Keith’s awakened powers seemed like so long ago. A distant memory; a catalyst for a new part of life he didn’t belong in. But to the stars?

What was six months to a life of billions of years?

Six months… it was too long for a mere human, for him especially. There were too many gaps in his memory, yet he could remember how elated, how excited the others were when they realised they could yield the powers of their Lions. Six months was a long time to wait for his moment. 

And yet, it still hadn’t come. 

Grip slackening, Lance hastily placed his guitar back down on the bench before he could drop it. He would have rather faced Zarkon head-on than somehow hurt his beloved instrument. For too Lance stared at the carved mahogany and black-gloss embellishments, fine strings and metal tuners. 

The observatory was a secret place only he knew, though playing the guitar - seeing a part of Earth - was much more of a comfort than the room would ever be.

For a couple more minutes Lance lingered in the room, switching between tuning the guitar (some of the notes felt a bit _off_ while he was playing) and staring out of the window into the vast universe, all the while being huddled in a cocoon of fluffy, hand-knitted blankets. It didn’t take long before his heart stopped trying to hammer out of his chest, and for his hands to stop shaking.

Only once he felt his eyelids drooping and tension slowly releasing from his muscles did Lance realise that perhaps it was probably time for him to head to bed. Allura did mention a team training (that wasn’t quintessence manipulation) at breakfast - something which he definitely could not do while sleep-deprived. Hell, he could barely complete training with a full ten hours of sleep.

_Oh well._ He made his bed, and now it was time to lie in it. But staying up was worth it. 

Throwing the blanket off of him, Lance carefully picked up his instrument and put it back in its case, making sure that it was nestled safely in the protective fabric before zipping the case up and hauling it on his back. The blanket stayed discarded on the ground; it wasn’t like someone would tell him to pick it up, anyways. 

And then he was off. Walking even more carefully than he did on his journey to the room, the blue paladin crept out of the observatory and through the same corridors as before. Years of sneaking back into the Garrison after long nights of (un)successfully bluffing his way into nightclubs and chilling at local arcaded gave him some sort of proficiency with avoiding every mental panel that creaked; Lance jumped over the floorboards in front of Shiro’s room and made sure to travel diagonally down the hallway with his and Keith’s rooms just to avoid such incident.

Soon enough, Lance stood in front of the door to his room and yawned. Unlike the others bare doors, he had his name (spelled more like ‘LaNCe’ rather than ‘Lance’) in alien sharpie, plus a couple more doodles of stars, planets, and one particular moon conquered by his official flag. 

When he had first drawn on it, Shiro and Allura had gotten him into _massive_ trouble, saying that he was ‘ _desecrating’_ the precious Castle and had ‘ _no respect for property.’_ It was only when Keith managed to convince Shiro that there was no hard in personalising their rooms did the two leaders finally back down.

Taking one last look left and right, Lance quietly punched the code to his room in the key panel and slunk back inside. For only a moment the room was illuminated by the corridor lighting, but with a soft _whoosh_ the door closed, plunging him into an inky darkness. 

_Home sweet home._

Lance crossed his room, stumbling over the piles of discarded undersuits and paladin robes, before finally haphazardly making his way his bedside table, where he clumsily flicked on a small, vaguely shark-shaped lamp he’d bought back on the last Swap Moon the team went to. It illuminated with a teal-ish light, casting shadows over every mound of clutter.

Despite his eyes basically _begging_ for some rest, and the constant yawning, Lance didn’t want to go to sleep. Well, he _did,_ but there was something that gnawed at his stomach, telling him that he _shouldn’t._

Coran called it anxiety. Lance called it nerves.

Once upon a time, he would have gone to Blue if sleep evaded him. Hell, there was a small stash of blankets and pillows in one of Blue’s cargo boxes that he used every time he fell asleep in his Lion. Somehow, her presence always cooled him down and soothed the hurricane that was his racing mind. Her homely aura was like a calm beach on a summer’s day - familiar and comforting.

But lately, he couldn’t seem to find the energy to go to her. Lance always thought they had a close bond - perhaps closer than anyone else - yet after six months of waiting for his supposedly strong bond to yield powers that everyone else had, he’d been forced to reassess their relationship.

Maybe....

Maybe he couldn’t unlock the quintessential manipulation because he wasn’t fit--

_No._

He was the blue paladin. The _only_ blue paladin. Falling short where the others succeeded was simply a pothole in the road - something he experienced time and time again, yet nothing he couldn’t work past.

Unconsciously, Lance moved towards the bathroom, where he hastily did all of his night-time skin care. Looking in the mirror, he saw a worn reflection staring back; someone tired of fighting a war that wasn’t their own (though, who else would fight it, if it wasn’t him?)

It was only recently that he came to the epiphany that he _had_ to be there, out in space. That he _had_ to stay and fight against the Galran empire. 

Yet sometimes? Sometimes fighting was, well, _tiring._

As if on cue, Lance yawned. It was a large enough yawn to make his jaw twinge slightly; a sign that maybe _,_ just _maybe,_ he should go to sleep.

With clumsy movements, the blue paladin wiped off his face mask, undressed into his blue boxers (he had found them at another Swap Moon embroidered with little Blue Lion heads. The choice to buy them was easily worth the reprimanding from Allura on spending all his money on useless items), and made his way to bed. His eyes caught the display of the little alarm clock on his bedside table, flashing red with a time that was way too close to his wake-up time. If Lance was lucky, he’d _maybe_ get half-dozen hours of sleep. _If_ he was lucky. 

But too often, he was not.

Donning a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and an eye mask, both of which were totally not stolen from Pidge, Lance sluggishly got into bed and pulled the thin blanket over himself. It wasn’t very warm, but he had quickly gotten used to the slight chill of the castle, no matter how many blankets Lance liberated (read: stole) from storage.

That was one of the many, many things he had gotten used to in his time in space. Falling asleep in an uncomfortable bed millions of light years away from home was another.

Tossing and turning in the bed, Lance let his tiredness take over and after too much fidgeting, he finally fell asleep.

-

Jolting forwards, Lance immediately woke up to a shrill alarm blaring over the castle’s communication system. It’s sharp crescendo of screaming sirens sounded over and over again for a couple more seconds, before abruptly shutting off and plunging him into silence.

“Ugh,” Lance groaned, sliding his hands down his face. The Castle’s alarm system was something he’d never get used to. Checking the bedside table clock - 06:30 Castle Standard Time (CST) - the boy groaned again. Even after years of waking up even earlier at the Galaxy Garrison, he’d never get used to being awake before sunrise.

Even though the alarm had woken him up, Lance let his torso fall back and laid still. He focused on the rising of his chest and the unmoving nature of the rest of his body. Lance knew he should get out of bed - he had training. 

But, for some reason, he just, well, didn’t want to. It was as if all energy he had accumulated throughout his sleep had vanished, leaving him immobile and unresponsive. Getting up seemed too much effort. Training seemed too much effort. 

Hell, even the thought of eating sent a wave of nausea and exhaustion through his muscles. 

For a fleeting moment, Lance almost regretted staying up so late the previous night. If he didn’t, then maybe he could have scrounged up to effort to actually _move._ Though that was an unfair assessment, he then decided, as he’d felt like this for most mornings that week - slow, unwilling to move. Lazy.

Slowly, Lance made his way out of bed, careful to untangle his limbs from the blanket before attempting to get out. He managed not to get caught, and stumbled not-so-gracefully out of his bed and into the bathroom. _Was it possible to feel both clumsy and methodical at the same time?_

A quick shower, facial routine, good brush to his teeth, and a change of clothes into his paladin armour later, Lance was ready to take on the world. 

He was almost out the door, before his eyes glanced at the bedside table, and suddenly realised that he had forgotten something. Striding back, the boy grasped at a small, cylindrical teal container next to his lamp, quickly twisting off the top and tipping the contents of it into his hand. A dozen or so tiny pills, half white and half bright pink, spilled into his palm; Lance deposited all but one back into the container and swallowed it dry, making a small face at the chalky aftertaste.

With the same lack of enthusiasm, he placed the pill bottle down and picked up another one that was almost completely identical, save for the white-coloured plastic facing. HE twisted the top off, but instead of chucking a bunch in his hand Lance carefully stuck his fingers into the bottle, and rummaged around until he managed to grab a pill. When he took it out, he looked at the more spherical, yellow shape of it, and again swallowed it without any water.

Lance groaned at the even worse aftertaste for the second pill. It was a new addition to his little ‘collection’ of medication - the first ones he had been taking for almost a year now to help with attention and hyperactivity. They weren’t really different from the ones he used to take at home, except for the side effects which unlike Earth medication managed to leave his appetite rather untouched.

But the second set of pills? They were new.

He had only begun to take them after a mission with Allura. By the time they got back, he was concussed and barely coherent. Allura forced him to start taking the pills the moment he got out of the healing pod.

Taking them sucked. It seemed to dull everything, and mute both his emotions and the colours painted around him.

But when Allura thought he wanted to hurt himself, taking them was better than putting up with her overbearing attitude.

Grimacing as the second pill’s aftertaste suddenly flooded his taste buds with an acrid punch, Lance screwed the cap back on and raced out of his room, almost tripping over mounds of discarded clothing in the process. 

As Lance exited his room and began running through the corridors, he couldn’t help but think on the previous night. How was it that the halls seemed more familiar, more welcoming, at night?

A short jog later, he arrived in a mess of short breaths at the dining area. Or technically a makeshift table outside of the Castle kitchen. The formal dining areas were too grand and, well, too _large_ for a group of seven to have breakfast in. Lance used to come to meals in only his casualwear, but after a string of unfortunate events consisting of Galra attacks occurring in the middle of a certain someone’s lunch, he decided it was best to just rock up in his armour. 

“Nice of you to join us, blue paladin.”

Lance whipped his head up, only to see Allura standing up at the breakfast table with a neutral expression adorning her gorgeous (in his own humble opinion) face. For some reason, she was dressed in her skin-tight battle gear rather than her usually princess-y dress. Like most of the time she looked at him, her eyebrows were raised in something Lance couldn't write place, but reminded him too much of his mother's own expression whenever he'd come home from elementary school with a failed test.

Gazing around the room, he belatedly realised that everyone was already there. With Hunk, Pidge, and Allura on one side of the table and Shiro, Keith, and Coran on the other, the table was pretty much full. Everyone looked to be in the middle of eating their food goo (/gross/).

_Nice of them to wait,_ Lance thought. _Though, to be fair, the others should need to go hungry for a single missing paladin._

It had been a while since he was this late. 

"Sorry I'm late!" Lance grinned sheepishly, scratching the back of his head. "Completely slept through my alarm. Sorry about that."

A small, rough noise seemed to come from Allura, though she didn’t do anything else to reprimand him. She continued to stand up, even as Lance walked past her to grab a fresh bowl of food goo. It was only once he sat down beside Hunk and listened to his and Pidge’s tittering about him always being late to everything that she spoke once again.

“Now that you’re here, I’d like to begin with saying that training today will be cancelled-”

Lance pumped a fist. _The day was getting better and better._ Cancelling training sessions was the best thing that could have happened.

As Pidge and Hunk both shouted ‘yes!’ at the same time, he was inclined to think that they also agreed.

Clearing her throat, Allura shot a severe look at the three youngest paladins, before continuing, “-training will be cancelled in favour of a mission briefing. Last night, Kolivan contacted me with time-sensitive information pertaining to the whereabouts of a fleet of high-security Empire vessels. He believes that this fleet contains data-logs of various high profile work camps.”

Lance watched as Allura’s eyes flicked to where Pidge was sitting. It was barely noticeable, yet there. The way Pidge’s spine stiffened, she must have noticed the movement too. 

Without any more explanation, Allura suddenly stood up, her chair pushing back across the ground with a ear-shrieking _screech,_ and with the poisonous of only a princess, continued, “after your morning meal, please come to mission control so Kolivan and I can give the full debriefing.”

Huh. _Suspicious._ Allura almost _never_ invited any of the Blades for mission briefings. 

“So…” Lance couldn’t help but drawl, “what’s the mission going to be?”

Allura turned around - only just enough so that he could just barely see the wild glint in her eyes - and said,

“We’re going to hijack a ship.”


	2. dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was time. 
> 
> Shiro didn’t bother dawdling in the Lion. He - followed closely by Hunk - activated their cloaking (while invisible to the naked eye, the paladin armour allowed them to see the others even while cloaked), and hurriedly left, leaving the three paladins alone.
> 
> How fun, Lance thought sarcastically. Every time he went to speak, a glare from Keith and/or Pidge had shut him up real fast. So, in all honesty, waiting for Shiro’s signal was pretty mind-numbingly boring. But he could stay calm, cool, and collected, for the mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY HEY HEY! 
> 
> Y'all. I am BLOWN AWAY by the response I got last chapter. The amount of people that commented was insane. To everyone that commented, kudos'd, and bookmarked: thank you. Some days when it's hard to write, y'alls support is what motivates me.
> 
> This chapter is a couple days late, sorry about that. I went away for a bit and had some issues come up, but I'll reward you guys with a chapter that's longer than the last one! (10 pages longer, to be exact)
> 
> Anyways, here's chapter 2!

> ### Chapter Two - Dulce et Decorum Est, Pro Patria Mori

_ “We’re going to hijack a ship.” _

The room erupted into a pandemonium.

Well, that was a bit exaggerated. Everyone (read: all the paladins sans Shiro) began talking over each other; nothing unique could be discerned from the cacophony of shouting.

Yet there was one man to rise above it. Shiro, in all his leader-ly grace, stood up and yelled, “Everyone!  _ Quiet!” _

Like military cadets trained to shut themselves up at a moments notice, all the paladins immediately fell silent. Hand spasming, Lance had to fight the urge to put his arm up in a salute. Hunk  _ did  _ put his arm up in a salute. As he looked at the others out of the corner of his eye, he could see everyone’s back straighter than a rod.

Shiro must have noticed how tense the other paladins were, as he winced, then tried to cover it up with an awkward grimace.

“Er, at ease, paladins," Shiro said awkwardly. Immediately, Lance slouched in his seat, arching his shoulders in an attempt to make sure his posture went back to normal (and his normal posture was... not up to military standards, to put it simply).

The table descended into a tense sort of silence before Hunk, the absolute saviour that he was, said, "So... what exactly is the mission going to be? 'Hijacking a ship' is a bit vague."

While the yellow paladin seemed to have directed the question at Shiro, it was Allura who answered.

"There was going to be a mission briefing tonight, though I suppose we can give you all the details now." She answered. Abruptly standing up, Allura walked towards the entrance of the dining room, turning around when no one else followed her. "Come on, then."

_ Why can't we have a mission briefing at breakfast, for once?  _ Lance dutifully stood from his seat and followed the princess, looking back forlornly at his half-eaten bowl of food goo.

Everyone else did the same; a screeching yowl of metal against metal sounded around the table as the other paladins plus Coran all pushed their chairs back. Soon enough, Allura had a gaggle of all the Castle of the Lions occupants following her to the mission briefing room in various states of hunger. 

Silently, Lance cursed Hunk for asking about the mission. Couldn't he have said something even a couple minutes later, when Lance was finished with his food?

The walk to the briefing area didn't even take a minute; the moment Allura stepped a toe inside, holograms lit up the room, accenting surrounding windows with a teal hue. Diagrams of planets and a schematic of a ship had been projected on one side, while a garbled list of information (in Altean,  _ of course,  _ because who cares that he nor any of the paladins spoke a lick of the equivalent of space Latin) spanned the other side of the room. In the centre, Kolivan's face was plastered on a hologram, with a white button in the middle indicating that it was a paused video.

Raising her hand, Allura swiped a finger from left to right. The hologram responded, flicking from the paused video to a still image of a… ship?

Well, it  _ looked  _ like a ship. It had an all-too-familiar purple colour scheme and a vaguely threatening aura, though its shape was unusual to say the least. The form reminded Lance of scissors; a long, thin front, and two large, almost-bulbous sections at the end. It didn’t seem that aerodynamic, but who knew?

The castle certainly wasn’t, yet it was one of the fastest ships ever made. 

"This is the Noxiv-X2,” Allura started, “a Class III Galran Empire spaceship and an unusual, yet not uncommon ship used in long-term trade routes of both materials and..." she hesitated, "...individuals. According to intel gathered by the Blade of Marmora, a fleet of a dozen Noxiv-X2 last phoeb had been secretly altered by the Empire to hold and transport all of their high-profile prisoners. These prisoners are often leaders and monarchs of planets that tried to oppose Zarkon and his forces, high-level rebel and Blade of Marmora operatives, and-"

"Humans." Pidge interjected. As Lance turned to look at her, he flinched at the steely gaze in her eyes.

Allura inclined her head. "Perhaps." She said, without any sort of comforting inflection. "As luck would have it, the Blade of Marmora managed to infiltrate one of the work camps that these prisoners are situated on, and gathered intel alluding to plans that the Empire had to move all of these prisoners to a similar camp in another galaxy."

A new hologram popped up, displaying two galaxies separated by a meter of blank space and conjoined by a thin, dotted line. Squinting, Lance took a step closer as he struggled to see all of the hologram's details from the back of the room. Once he got closer, he managed to make out a small, red circle on the dotted line, unlabelled yet oddly intriguing.

"Tomorrow, the fleet will be crossing the Hodgekin Pass-” Allura gestured to the red circle, “-a section within the Zorua galaxy that has rock particulates and binary asteroids that orbit each other rather than the solar system it is in. 

At the mention of cool space things, Lance's interest was immediately piqued. Nothing interested him more than the weirdness of space in general (except for video games but  _ hey, _ he was only seventeen. Who could blame him?).

Taking a short breath in, Allura paused, then continued her briefing. "Once the Castleship is within five light minutes of the Noxiv fleet, all of you paladins will take the Green Lion and sneak onto the head ship-"

A new image popped onto the hologram, replacing Kolivan's face with an illustration of a large, mean-looking spaceship shaped uncannily like a pair of scissors.

"-and access the mainframes."

Lance watched intently as Allura took a step back at the same time Shiro stepped forwards. The hologram changed again, this time featuring what seemed to be the internal schematics of the Noxiv ship. 

Unlike most Galran architecture that was blocky and set into easily navigable sections, this ship seemed to have been designed by someone who liked mazes just a little bit  _ too  _ much. Lance's head spun as he tried to make out all the twists and turns and dead ends on the floor plan.

"Once we land in the hangar, we'll split up into two groups. Pidge, Lance, and Keith-" Shiro inclined his head to the three paladins. Once he caught his leader's eye, Lance waved. "-you three will go to the mainframe and download all the ship's information regarding slaveship routes, prisoners, and anything else of importance. Cloaking will be used for reconnaissance so please, don't make contact with anyone on board."

Lance groaned, just soft enough so that no one else could hear.  _ Why did Shiro have to put Keith on this team?  _ he thought, annoyed. Don't get him wrong, Lance appreciated Keith's physical prowess and incredible skill in battle (that he would never admit out loud), yet the boy could  _ not _ do subtle to save his life. 

Every time Shiro sent Keith on some sort of stealth mission, it would end with him engaging, and Lance having to clean up after him. 

_ As always. _

Oblivious to his inner turmoil Shiro plowed forward, "Hunk and I will go ahead and create a distraction. We'll target the communications room, so that anyone guarding the mainframe will hopefully be called away. Once the information has been downloaded, we'll all meet up back at the hangars, and make our retreat back to the Castle."

All in all, Lance had to admit that the mission plan - so far - seemed fairly solid, and not at all flimsy or prone to change like Team Voltron's usual plans seemed to be. It was safe. Too safe.

And while he could appreciate it, Lance wasn't surprised when Pidge suddenly stood up, face twisted in a snarl.

"But what about the prisoners?" she said, hazel eyes narrowing. "Shouldn't we save them? Aren't you leaving them to die?!"

Shiro held his hands up, palms facing outwards in a universal calming gesture, though it seemed to do little to placate her.

"Using the information from the ships, we will be able to track the fleet and rescue all the prisoners. Unfortunately, we just don't have the firepower at the moment to target  _ every _ ship in that fleet and rescue  _ every  _ prisoner." The black paladin replied, calm and collected as ever. 

Shiro  _ did  _ have a point. There was no way they could take on a whole fleet of ships filled with prisoners and make it out with them alive. Hell, the team probably didn’t have enough firepower for themselves to make it out alive.

_ Surely that was obvious?  _

_ Or not,  _ seeing as Pidge seemed to look even angrier than before. 

“What about Matt? Or Dad? They could be on those ships!" Pidge inched closer to Shiro, her voice raising higher and higher. "Don't you care about them?!"

The temperature in the room  _ plummeted. _ Lance froze, and so did Shiro.

_ Now that was a low blow.  _ He involuntarily winced as Shiro's face fell, stress lines overtaking his face until he looked both too old and too tired.

"I-I..."

"Hey hey hey! Before you guys fight, I've got a question!" Lance crowed, walking in between the green and black paladins with a fake smile tugging at his lips. "What time are we leaving, then? Please don't tell me it's at like, 5am, or something as ridiculous as that." The words tumbled out of his mouth like a waterfall, uncontrollable and free. He knew he had to do something,  _ anything,  _ to diffuse whatever funk Pidge and Shiro had gotten into.

Otherwise, well...

...let's just say that Pidge was a very feral fighter when angry.

When four teenagers, a barely-adult, and two aliens were trapped on a ship together, tensions were sure to rise. That was a given, Lance supposed, especially when there were disagreements.

On one hand, he could empathise with Pidge's anger. If it was  _ his  _ family, Lance would have wanted to do the same - go all in, guns blazing, and do  _ anything  _ to rescue them as soon as possible.

On the other hand, they were Voltron. The legendary defenders of the universe, born to uphold an unshakeable moral code and help all those in need, indiscriminately. Who were they to rescue two humans over potentially thousands of other prisoners, while jeopardising everyone else's chances of rescue?

In his opinion, Allura and Shiro's plan was the best of both worlds. It gave them an opportunity to rescue  _ everyone _ , including Matt and Sam Holt (if they were even on the fleet), just at a later date.

Lance couldn’t lie to himself by saying that he wouldn’t have reacted the same way if he was in Pidge’s shoes. But he wasn’t, and he couldn’t do anything to convince Pidge that Shiro’s plan was the best in the long run.

What he  _ could  _ do was ease the tension. It was something he was naturally good at (as you’d expect someone to be with two older sisters and brothers) - one of the only things he was naturally good at, really. 

And that’s how Lance found himself running his mouth about waking up early. It was dumb and pretty juvenile of him, but wasn’t that what he was known for? 

Luckily, Shiro took the bait. Instead of stuttering he answered, "Allura will send the Castle through a wormhole at 0950, to arrive at the Hodgekin Pass at 1000. However," and everyone - including Pidge - groaned at that because of  _ course  _ there was some sort of catch, "the wake-up alarm has been set to 0630, so that we have time to eat a decent breakfast and prepare for the mission at one final briefing." 

_ Fuck.  _

Lance didn't know if he swore out loud or not, but Keith sure as hell did. In a utopian world with a mission at 10am, he would have slept in at a reasonable time (read: 9:30am). But Lance's life wasn't a utopia, and Shiro just  _ loved  _ to make him suffer.

Curse the Garrison and their dumb early-rising habits. They must have rubbed off on Shiro. 

_ "Really?" _ Keith said from behind him, annoyance tinging his words. "Isn't 0630 a bit... excessive?"

Shiro shrugged. "It gives us time to prepare."

Keith opened his mouth to respond yet was cut off before he could even say a word.

“Since everything is sorted out, you all must get sufficient sleep for tomorrow.” Allura spoke, sounding like a command rather than question. When everyone stayed silent, she added, “spend today resting your muscles for tomorrow.”

_ That was fair, _ and oddly benevolent of the princess.  _ Where is the catch? _

“Coran has also sent the mission details and ship schematics to all of your personal devices. I expect everyone to go through it in detail sometime today.”

_ Ah, there it is.  _

A chorus of complaints rang out around the room, yet a severe stare from Allura quickly shut them up. 

_ “Oi,” _ Keith hissed, covertly tugging Lance’s hand so that he was pulled to the back of the group. “After this, do you want to do some training with me?”

The blue paladin’s eyebrows rose incredulously. “Didn’t Allura tell us to rest? And like, not train?”

“...and?”

Despite the expectant expression Keith gave him, Lance didn’t really want to train. He almost gave in, but the thought of Allura’s wrath targeting him again was more than enough of a deterrent.

“Next time,” he said back. “After the mission.”

Keith murmured something underneath his breath that sounded suspiciously like ‘ _ spoilsport.’ _ Which was  _ completely  _ false on account of training being actual torture and not fun at all. There was nothing to spoil, anyways. 

“We’ll go over any final details at the final briefing tomorrow.” Shiro continued, seemingly deaf to the two boys’ hushed conversation. “Remember to have your comms on you at all times, just in case Allura or I send new information.”

There was a matter of affirmation from the other paladins. Lance responded with an enthused “yes sir!”

When neither Shiro nor Allura spoke again, he took their silence as a dismissal. As the others began to file out of the room, Lance sauntered to the observation deck, tablet in one hand (and once he went via his room as a pit stop), and guitar in the other.

** ༄༅ **

As per Allura’s request, Lance spent the rest of his day doing nothing much. He got most of the reading done out of the way with two vargas, then spent the rest of his time messing around with his guitar, playing the single player mode of Mercury Gameflux, and helping Hunk out in the kitchen.

Four bags of space-flour, three alien eggs, and a half-dozen weird Altean cupcake tins later, the two boys were up to their arms in black coloured cupcakes that tasted strangely like chilli and mango.

_ Space food was weird _ .

Time that day seemed to slip though Lance’s fingers like sand. One second, tick, the boy was baking with his best friend, and then the next the clock on his phone read 1013. Dinner must have passed, yet he remembered nothing of it - only faint wisps of images, of gelatinous goo and metal spoons. 

He could barely even remember that morning. Did he take his pills? Did he eat all of his breakfast?

Alone in the dining room, Lance frowned.

It… it was late. He should be going to sleep soon, if he wanted a solid night’s rest. 

But something niggled at the back of his mind, something restless and anxious and there was  _ no way  _ he would be able to sleep at that moment. Maybe…

Almost unconsciously Lance stood up, and let his feet carry him out of the room. He had half a mind to go to his bedroom and well, he  _ was  _ going to go there.

Except, the niggling feeling in his head had grown into a deafening buzz of anxious feelings. He couldn’t pinpoint why he felt them, nor what they meant. A voice at the back of his mind told him that he should talk to someone about it, but Hunk was asleep, Coran was who-knows-where, and Keith? Well, the blue paladin didn’t think he’d appreciate a little heart-to-heart. 

And so, even though Allura told everyone to get a good night's sleep, Lance couldn’t help but take a detour on the way to his bedroom. Avoiding the usual routes the others took, he wove in and out of winding corridors, being careful to avoid the ones with the most amount of security cameras (who knew if Coran was watching).

At one point Allura turned into the corridor he was walking down, and he had to quickly jump into the nearest maintenance closet to avoid her. It was a maintenance closet he was intimately familiar with (for some reason, it had a  _ lot _ of sewing supplied) - familiar enough with it that he could easily tell when the princess walked past and left the corridor. Once the echoes of her footsteps began to fade into the background hum of the castle, he popped out of the closet and started his journey again. 

The path to the Lion’s hangars wasn’t too far, in all honesty. If Lance didn’t take the zipline down - which he didn’t, because ziplines were  _ annoying  _ to hang onto - he had to walk a good five minutes to an elevator, go down three stories, and go directly straight for another couple minutes until he reached the hangars. 

Like the previous night, Lance let himself get lost in the ambience of the idle castle, feeling his mind slowly drift away with each passing second of white noise. He was close enough to the engines that he could faintly hear the roar of a billion combustion reactions happening every second. It was… nice. 

He almost didn’t notice how close the entrance of Blue’s hangar was until he stood barely five meters away, feeling the presence of the door as it loomed over him. There seemed to be a bubble that surrounded the hangar, something paper-thin and flimsy yet still a barrier that separated him and the Lions. Lance rubbed the back of his neck, almost sheepishly, as he felt like a jogger looking through the windows of a mansion - a present outsider, yet still detached.

And  _ oof,  _ did Lance’s thoughts get away from him right then. Shaking his head, he tried to clear his mind like a dog shook water from their fur; Blue didn’t like when his head was all jumbled, either.    
  


“Uh… hey, Blue.” Lance said, this voice wavering as he stared up at the giant war machine. The Lion glowed faintly in the dimly lit hangar, rivulets of deep-ocean and bright yellow streaming from different parts of her body.

As he walked closer, the hexagonal barrier surrounding her stood tall. His strides hesitated, almost wary of going closer.  _ What if she shut him out?  _

Luckily, with only a couple meters to spare, the particle barrier dropped, revealing Blue in all her glorious nature. Up close, she stood even more intimidating, a terrifying presence in her own right. He never really found out what her traits were after interrupting Allura on their first day in space, but Lance figured it was something to do with being flexible. Case in point: Blue, to him, was both the most comforting and scariest Lion of them all. 

Of course, she never used to be so imposing. Once upon a time Blue was his closest friend, and her cockpit his second bedroom. Though after the mission with Allura, well…

“So, how’ve you been hanging? What’s the gossip going around?” Cracking a small, lopsided smile, Lance bantered at his Lion. She didn’t reply -  _ surprise surprise  _ \- but a muted wave of lukewarm water lapped at the shore that was Lance’s mind. That was more than he felt from her in days.

Without any prompting, a mechanical  _ hiss _ sounded throughout the hangar as a gunmetal-grey ramp slowly descended from Blue’s stomach.

“Oh! Thanks, Blue!” He grinned, shooting a finger gun. The Lion didn’t reply, and he climbed up the ramp with an awkward grimace on his face. Usually Blue would always respond somehow to his finger guns, whether it be some sort of mental  _ sensation  _ or movement. Hell, her particle barrier would go down the moment he stepped a single toe within the hangar, yet for some reason the barrier was acting moody. (His pickup line never worked to fix the issue, either. It seemed he  _ couldn’t  _ activate her particle barrier.)

His strides a bit more wary than usual, Lance made his way through Blue’s cockpit. Every so often he would stop to make minor adjustments to the storage containers in her cargo hold, adjusting the placement of a storage bin here, and rearranging his knitting supplies in a cupboard there. He liked Blue’s cargo bay to be as orderly as possible, even though he wasn’t even supposed to have recreational supplies in there.

Though it wasn’t like Shiro could get him in trouble for that. Blue didn’t let  _ anyone  _ in, especially Shiro or Allura. Whenever they got near her particle barrier would be up in a flash, regardless of whether Lance was there or not. He supposed she didn’t mesh with their quintessence, or something. 

_ Eh, who knew. _ Quintessence was a confusing thing to understand. After half a year of knowing about it, Lance sure as hell didn’t understand a thing.

Eventually, the boy managed to traverse Blue’s limited corridors to her head, where his favourite room - the cockpit - lay. He didn’t have to press a button, or even ask Blue to open the door, before a mechanical  _ hiss  _ sounded throughout the hallway and the room was revealed. A faint, salty odour invaded his nostrils, familiar yet too hard to place. Stepping into the room felt like coming back to a childhood home after years away. 

The moment Lance entered, the one-dull control board lit up with flashing teal hues. His pilot chair swivelled back almost as if it had a mind of its own, just air enough so that he didn’t have to walk far to sit down on it. If he didn’t know better, Lance would have thought that Blue was inviting him to talk.

Fondness bubbled up from within him.

Even when she was distant, Blue still seemed to tolerate him. And that was something not many people would do. 

With another pause of hesitation, Lance walked up to the chair and sat on it, body sinking slightly in the space-leather cushioning. His breath caught in his throat as the chair suddenly shot forwards, almost flinging him into the control board. Luckily, it stopped only half a meter before, yet his body still jolted at the sudden halt. A muted  _ thump  _ echoed in the room as he slammed his hands onto the controls.

And then…

And then, the cockpit was silent.

There were no vague sensations from Blue, no miscellaneous machine-like sounds that he could interpret. Complete and utter silence, save for his own breathing.

  
Lance had gotten too used to that, lately. 

When the lack of noise became too deafening, he decided to speak. “So, uhm...” Lance trailed off, feeling slightly awkward talking to sentient war machine who wouldn’t respond back. He cleared his throat, cough echoing around the metal cockpit. “If you haven’t heard, Allura is sending us on a mission. Infiltration and extraction.”

Silence. 

It carried on for almost too long but then, the panel lit up with a soft cerulean hue. Not nearly as bright as it would have been when she was flying, though still alight. 

He cleared his throat again. 

“Yeah... apparently the Green Lion will be off half the team. Remember the new cloaking tech Pidge put into them a couple months- er, phoebs ago? We’ll be using that to sneak onto a Galra ship.”

Around him, something  _ hummed, _ sending a small rumble throughout the cockpit. And then, as abruptly as it started, it stopped, but it was enough for a ghost of a smile to appear on Lance’s face. 

“It’s gonna be a dangerous mission, y’know? I’ve been paired with Keith  _ and  _ Pidge, and we all know how  _ that  _ always goes.” He let out a hollow laugh. The memories of  _ those  _ missions flashed behind his eyelids, broken bodies and ivy and towering cliffs. “So it, uh… well, maybe it’s best if you could help me with controlling your quintessence? For the mission, of course.”

A part of him felt foolish for asking. Another part of him felt embarrassed. He sounded pathetic,  _ begging  _ for something the others had already earned.

That still didn’t stop the desperation leaking into his voice.

Lance stared down at his hands, his palms facing upwards. He could see every line, every callous from his bayard’s recoil etched in the meat of his palm and remnants of guitar strings on the tips of his fingers. His hands shook.

He was waiting for something,  _ anything,  _ from Blue, that would tell him that she could hear, that she was listening.

But nothing happened.

And Lance waited in the cockpit in silence.

_ Figures. _

Why would the universe ever throw him a bone? Why couldn’t things ever come easy to him. _Of_ _course_ his begging hasn’t gotten through - why would it? He wasn’t good enough to be a fighter pilot, wasn’t good enough to take over the black paladin’s mantle in Shiro’s short absence, wasn’t good enough to-

_ “Heh,” _ he finally said, after minutes alone with his own thoughts. “Sorry I asked, gorgeous. That was dumb of me. I know you don’t like being rushed.” With that Lance chuckled, devoid of any real humour.

Suddenly, the boy stood up from the comfort of Blue’s chair, spinning on his heel and slowly backing away from the room. Lance kept his head down, maybe because he didn’t want to look around at his Lion’s ever-messy interior, or maybe because he didn’t want Blue to notice his glassy eyes.

“Bye, Blue,” he murmured wetly. She didn’t respond.

And with that he walked out of his Lion, footfalls on metal echoing around the giant room. He didn’t want to look back, refused to, but as he walked through the entrance to the hangar Lance… stopped.

Logically, he knew that the Voltron Lions were nothing more than hunks of metal and quintessence woven into something sentient that wasn’t quite organic, yet Lance swore he could feel warm breaths billowing against the back of his neck. It was as if a lion stood behind him, waiting at the ready for him to faulty, for him to hesitate. 

Slowly, Lance turned his head only  _ slightly,  _ just barely glancing back. Blue eyes met yellow, and he froze. 

A magnetic attraction held his gaze at the blinding yellow lights. Something at the back of his mind - a barely noticeable itch - grew in intensity, until all Lance could focus on was his Lion, and the cacophony of white noise growing in his mind. 

_ How are you supposed to win a staring contest with a machine?  _ he thought,  _ It isn’t fair; they can’t blink! _

His eyelids began to grow heavy, yet Lance knew he couldn't look away. Not now, when for the first time in too long he felt properly connected to Blue, not now, when--

_ “Lance?” _ A voice said behind him, jolting him out of his little staring contest with Blue, “What’re you doing down here?”

Surprised, the blue paladin spun around, only to grin sheepishly at Keith’s unimpressed expression glowering at him. He was still dressed in his armour (no surprises there, Keith basically lived in his armour or undersuit), yet had ditched the uncomfortable, semi-heeled paladin boots for a pair of Red Lion slippers, a fashion choice Lance reluctantly agreed with.

“Oh! Aha, you know. Just chilling.” Lance replied, his words hitching a couple octaves higher than normal. 

Keith’s eyebrows rose. “In the hangars?” 

“Chilling with  _ Blue _ . I always go down and have a talk with her right before a mission, yanno?” Wrist going limp, Lance gestured his hand in a way that not even he could properly decipher. 

“Uh, not really, no.” 

And  _ that  _ admission sent a jolt of confusion down Lance’s spine. When he wasn’t in the training hall or in his bedroom, Keith could always be found in his own Lion, presumably having some sort of bonding session or other wacky Lion hijinks. Surely that meant that he talked to his Lion on occasion,  _ right? _

“Red and I don’t talk, I guess? We communicate more by, uh….” Narrowing his eyes, Keith’s nose scrunched as he tried to find the right word. “...vague feeling things?”

_ “Wow, Keith,  _ ‘vague feeling things,’ Real descriptive.” He deadpanned.

That was probably the wrong thing to say, as the red paladin immediately crossed his hands across his chest in a guarded way. His indigo eyes seemed to flash brighter, yet it must have been a trick of the light. “That’s how it feels! Red liked to send images or feelings, or some shit.” Keith’s gaze dropped to the ground, almost self-consciously. “I don’t know.”

Once upon a time, Lance could have teased Keith’s bad explanation, but his weird staring contest with Blue had drained him just enough to give the boy a free pass. That, and after months of teasing he gradually learned that perhaps teasing  _ wasn’t  _ a constructive way to continue a conversation. “Oh! I think I get what you mean!” He exclaimed. “Most of the time, Blue does a similar thing. Like, with communicating via feeling and all that jazz. Though it kinda evolved into something more, I guess?”

To that, Keith didn’t say anything. He had blinked once, twice, before opening his mouth to reply, “Cool.”

_ Succinct as always, Mullet. _

“Cool,” Lance echoed. 

Man, he  _ loved  _ talking to someone who could barely keep a coherent conversation for more than five minutes. Perks of living alone in the desert for too long, Lance supposed. But,  _ hey, _ at least he could understand everything that Keith said. Too often did he have to leave a conversation with Hunk or Pidge after they started blabbering about God-knows-what technology. By all accounts Lance wasn’t dumb; he got into the Garrison, on a general excellence scholarship no less, yet no matter how hard he tried he could never keep up with the yellow and green paladin. They were just too… smart.

Without warning, Keith began to speak again. “Now that you’re done  _ talking  _ to your Lion, can you go to bed now?”

_ Um, excuse me?  _ Lance blinked, face recoiling as if he’d just bitten into a particularly sour lemon. Who was  _ Keith  _ to tell him that? “You’re not my mama. You can’t tell me what to do.”

Scoffing, Keith took a step forward, getting just a  _ little bit too close  _ for comfort. “Allura said we had to go to sleep early.”

“Allura also said that my ears were ugly. Sometimes people are wrong.” He fervently replied, definitely not still salty that the princess had poor ear-related attraction. 

“We have a very important mission tomorrow-”

_ We have a very important mission my ass,  _ Lance thought. “And? If I remember correctly, didn’t you pull an all-nighter before our last mission?” He interjected, unconsciously digging his nails into the fleshy part of his palms, wincing when it pierced skin. A quick glance down revealed miniscule beads of crimson blood welling around his nails.

_ Oops. _

Looking back up, Lance couldn’t help but feel judged as Keith made a weird face at him, something he couldn’t quite decipher. To an extent he understood - it was a weird hill for him to die on. Out of everyone Lance probably got the most amount of sleep (the bar wasn’t high, though. Shiro’s constant patrolling of the corridors and Keith’s ever-presence in the training hall; Hunk’s anxiety and Pidge’s thirst for knowledge, they all came at the expense of what little rest the team got).

But still. Just like the time he had refused to put goggles on during a swimming lesson when he was eight, Lance had chosen his hill to die on. 

And just like his mama had given him the biggest can of whoop-ass after the aforementioned swimming disaster, Keith didn’t look like he was going to put up with Lance’s shit.

“I swear to  _ quiznak,  _ Lance,” and,  _ oof,  _ the way Keith used his name as an expletive had sent shivers down the blue paladin’s spine. It was yet another thing Keith had in common with his parents. “If you don’t go to bed then I’ll tell Shiro.”

In that moment, Lance knew he had been betrayed at the highest level.

_ “You wouldn’t.” _

A small, barely-there grin stretched across Keith’s face, cheshire in a way that Lance knew he was screwed. Keith didn’t joke around when it came to threats; He had been on one too many receiving ends of a food goo fight to know this. 

“Fine! I’ll go to sleep!” Crying out, Lance flourished his hands as if the added emphasis would convey how annoyed he was. “Anything to get you off my ass.”

“Good!” Keith growled.

  
  
“Great!” He shot back. The two boys stared at each other for a moment too long, tension palpable in the air. Lance didn’t look away - couldn’t - for he knew that the first one to do so would lose.

Okay, so  _ maybe _ their rivalry wasn’t  _ quite _ dead. Still, Lance didn’t like losing. He hated it. It didn’t matter if he was playing a school soccer game, Killbot Phantasm with Pidge, or battling Galra in space - Lance refused to lose.

And when he did, well…

“Ha! You blinked!” He crowed, jumping up in victory.   


Keith’s eye twitched, though unfortunately he didn’t rise to the bait. “You’re an idiot. Go to bed.”

  
  
_ “You’re an idiot. Go to bed.”  _ Lance repeated mockingly. “Fine, fine, I’m going,  _ mum.”  _

He spun on his heel, barely hearing the red paladin say,  _ “good.”  _ A good old middle finger was all Lance graced his friend with. He totally did  _ not  _ scurry from their conversation like a child who had been scolded.

By the time Lance got back to his room and settled into bed, he realised that he forgot to water his plants. 

** ༄༅ **

Lance’s first thought as he woke up was:  _ it’s too early for the alarms to go off.  _

His second, subsequent thought, was:  _ oh, it’s just the mission alarm. _

With that out of the way, he closed his eyes and fumbled around for his headphones that had fallen off in the middle of the night. Hopefully they would block out those pesky alarm noises. It was only as Lance was about to put the headphones on again that he had his third thought:  _ oh fuck, the mission! _

Body jolting out of bed, Lance fumbled his way through his morning routine, almost tripping over the headphone’s wires as he struggled through the motions of putting on his undersuit and armour. It took him two and a half tries to get his cuirass on the right way, and another two tries to get the rest of his armour on. 

The alarm was still blaring by the time he had finished his messily done morning routine. Lance could tune it out, but every so often he’d begin to hear it again and subsequently flinch. Loud noises had never particularly bothered him (it came with the territory of growing up in a house with four other siblings), yet the Castle’s alarm systems never failed to be unnerving. Though, he only really started to become more sensitive to them like, two months ago.

Needless to say, the last six months of missions had been hell on his ears.

Honestly, the alarms were a bit… unneeded. Most of the time they were only to be used for emergencies, but after Allura found out that he slept with noise-cancelling headphones, she had begun to use the alarm systems to wake him - and by extension, everyone else - up for missions or important meetings. It was fair to an extent; Lance was chronically late to those events because of his headphones.

_ Oops. _

In his defence, Lance had been sleeping with headphones for  _ years.  _ He first used them to block out his twin sister’s snoring when they shared a room (and other assorted household loudness), and then used it in a similar fashion with his numerous Garrison roommates. Especially Hunk - that dude snored like a roaring lion. He couldn’t just  _ stop  _ wearing them to bed.

After all, once Lance had a habit, it was almost impossible to break.

See: his skincare routine.

At this point, skincare was almost ingrained in his morning ritual. Most of the time doing the motions of it was instinctual - Lance didn’t have to think as he put various, pastel-labelled creams and gels on his face. The moment he had finished putting on his armour, he rushed into the bathroom to begin his daily routine.

It wasn’t  _ too  _ long. Only a moisturiser, two creams to keep his teenage acne at bay, and either one or two sprays, depending on how dry his skin was. And judging by the way his face looked in the mirror - he needed both. 

After spreading one last serum onto his face (a gold-ish sort of liquid that left him positively  _ glowing),  _ Lance rushed out of the bathroom and almost out the door, before doubling back to his bedside table. Popping open both pill bottles, he popped them in his mouth and swallowed, before chasing it down with some water. 

_ Ugh.  _ The bitter aftertaste lingered in his mouth, clinging to his tastebuds with its disgusting flavour. Drinking more water wouldn’t help, as it tended to remain in his mouth for minutes after. Sometimes he wished he could just stop-

Suddenly, the alarms died down, sending Lance into a jarring void of silence. Without the red lights illuminating his room, an inky-black darkness draped itself over everything, sparing not even himself.

With that, Lance took a moment to breath without the ear-splitting alarms as a distraction. He gripped his bedside table, kindled turning white as his fingers dug into the cold metal finishing. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath in, and only exhaled once his lungs were completely full.

That day's mission would be tough; he had to be at his best.

No goofing off. No showing off.

Pidge  _ needed  _ him to stay serious. What she needed was a team that she could trust to get her family - her  _ real  _ family - back. It was up to Lance and everyone else to make sure that she could be reunited with Matt and Mr. Holt. It was the least they could do for a teammate and friend.

All Lance had to do was keep calm, cool, and collected - the three C's that his mama always said would help in a tough situation. No matter how much the mission went awry (and that was almost a certainty, given Team Voltron's unlucky history with sticking to plans), Lance would be the perfect soldier.

He  _ had  _ to be.

After all, who else was he, why was he here, if not to be one?

A loud knock jolted Lance from his thoughts. He flinched, snapping his head to where the noise emitted from. Someone rapped at his door, once, twice, three times, before they called out, "Hey, Lance! Are you still in there?"

Tension that Lance didn't know he had been holding seeped from his muscles.  _ It's just Hunk,  _ he thought, relieved. He could recognise Hunk's warm voice anywhere.

"Yeah, I am. Coming out now!"

Without further hesitation Lance hurried to the entrance of the room, pushing on the little button beside the door. Immediately he was greeted by the towering form of Hunk, equally dressed yet looking slightly less dishevelled. His signature bandanna dutifully kept most of his hair from his face, though a couple stray strands escaped, slightly obscuring his eyes. 

"Oh, thank  _ quiznak _ you're awake," Hunk breathed out, his worried bleeding into a state of ease. "I was worried you slept through the alarm. Again."

Lance  _ knew  _ his friend was making a joke, yet he couldn't help but feel just a tiny but offended. "Excuse me, I haven't slept through an alarm in weeks!" He said, placing a hand onto of his heart for emphasis.

Hunk simply chuckled at his antics, slinging a beefy arm over his shoulder. "Of course you haven't buddy," he spoke with a reassuring tone that melted any lingering annoyance still cloying to Lance's emotions. "C'mon, let's go get some breakfast. We've got a big day ahead of us."

"You can say that again." The blue paladin sighed. He didn't want to be reminded of how  _ important  _ today would be. If they succeeded in their mission, well...

Pidge would have her family again.

Their resident gremlin of a paladin wouldn't need to come to Lance at night for support, or to play games in an effort to distract her from a failing search. She'd have her brother, the infamous Matt, and father for that.

"What are you waiting for?" Lance asked, more rhetorical than not. "Let's go before Allura has our asses for being late!" And with that, the two boys rushed down winding corridors as they made their way to the dining room.

_ Thank god that Hunk came and got me,  _ Lance thought to himself. He didn't verbalise it, yet he was grateful that his friend came when he did. Even though Lance was completely dressed, sometimes (especially before missions), he tended to end up in his own head, just thinking rather than perceiving things around him. Too many times did he go on missions without breakfast simply because he was too caught up in his thoughts.

Luckily, Hunk had picked up on his quirks. Back in the Garrison, Hunk would always be there for him before an exam or major test simulation, just to make sure he didn't forget about it. And more recently, he'd do the same whenever Lance had big missions, debriefings, or even sometimes for training, too.

Lance smiled. No matter what happened, Hunk was an amazing friend. He was extraordinarily lucky to have him.

In a blink of an eye, they had rounded a corner and were right in front of the dining room. Staring in, it seemed that most of the Castle's occupants were already there - Allura in all her pristine glory was sitting next to Shiro and Coran, heads together discussing something that if he had to guess, would probably have to do with today's mission. Their food goo bowls lay forgotten to the side. Keith was also sitting down around the table, though unlike the others was digging into his food with such a vigour that made Lance simultaneously scrunch his nose in disgust, and grin fondly. His cousins always used to eat in a similar, wild-animal-like way.

Squeezing his hand, Hunk guided him into the room. The moment they stepped in Keith looked up, gave them a nod, and went back to his frenzied inhaling of food goo. Neither Shiro nor Allura gave him or Hunk any indication that they had noticed them, yet Coran - good old Coran - lifted his head, and smiled.

"Morning, Number Two and Three!" The advisor said with his usual jovial cheer. HIs voice instantly made Lance perk up. "You're just in time for what you humans call brake-fast!"

Every human in the room cringed. Coran's mangling of human phrases never failed to make the paladins either laugh or want to shoot themselves. Lance always thought he did it on purpose, though never had enough proof.

"It's breakfast," Hunk gently corrected. The yellow paladin led him to the table, where they sat next to each other, opposite Keith.

"My apologies, Number Two." Gripping his moustache, Coran replied, yet the twinkling of mischief in his eyes led Lance to believe he wasn't that sorry at all. "You humans and your language have such difficult words."

_ Cheers, I'll drink to that. _

Inwardly, Lance wholeheartedly agreed with the advisor. 'Human language' or English, really, was a real pain in the ass. He remembered learning it as a child, and to this day some words still gave him issues. 

Without prompting, Hunk got up from where he was sitting, and proceeded to fill up three bowls of nauseatingly green goo. When he came back, he placed two in front of where they were sitting, but pushed the other one to the side.

_ Wait a minute... _

"Where's Pidge?" Lance asked, brows furrowing. Surely for a mission this important, she would be the first one away.

He made eye contact with Keith, who merely shrugged, and then Allura, who didn't answer, yet it was Shiro that finally said, "She's in her room, resting. Unfortunately Pidge didn't get much sleep last night, so I've given her a couple extra minutes to catch up."

_ Damn.  _ Lance winced.

"Is she okay?" He asked yet again, this time directed at Shiro. 

Something flashed across the black paladin's face, though it was gone before Lance could decipher what it was. "She should be fine." Shiro said, wording it in a way that made Lance worry about the youngest member of the team even more. "I'll go wake her up soon. You don't need to worry."

Nodding, Lance gave Shiro a small mock salute and said, "yes, sir," before getting stuck into his bowl of food goo.

_ It tastes like jelly, it tastes like jelly,  _ Lance chanted in his mind, repeating the mantra over and over again as he shovelled spoonful’s of unappetising goo into his mouth. The more he distracted himself from how bland the goo was, the more he could pretend it was just some exotic jelly. Or custard. Or anything that wasn't as disgusting as food goo.

Once he and Hunk were all finished with their breakfast, Lance glanced up to see Shiro, Allura, and Coran's little team huddle dissolved. They too were eating (though at a much slower, and with better manners than he, Keith, and Hunk did).

Pidge, surprisingly, still hadn't come.

It was only when he began to clear up the table that the green paladin arrived, glasses askew and with the worst case of bedhead that Lance had ever seen. Her entrance cast a sort of tension across the table, which was only emphasised by how disastrous (in Lance's opinion) she looked. Hair and glasses aside, her armour was messily put on and adorned by too-many scuff marks that tarnished the usually brilliant green accents. 

"Good to see you awake, Number Five!" Coran greeted, his words cutting through the weird funk that Pidge's entrance had put them in. Pidge raised a limp hand in greeting, then staggered over to the seat that had the lone bowl of food goo in front of it.

Raking his eyes up and down her body, Lance couldn't help but stare at Pidge in concern. To put it succinctly: she looked like shit. Even worse than he did.

Pidge practically lived in a state of tiredness given how many all-nighters she pulled in favour of working on a new piece of technology. A messy appearance wasn't anything new, really.

But, well... something was off. Lance  _ knew  _ it.

And it scared him that he didn't know what to do.

"So," Pidge said, cutting herself off with a yawn before continuing, "please remind me what’s happening. It totally slipped my mind what time we’re leaving.”

_ Great question.  _ Truthfully, he had completely forgotten what time they were supposed to leave as well. Luckily, Shiro was there to the rescue.

"We have one final debrief at 0830, and as a team will wormhole to the cruiser at 1000. After that, Allura will pilot the Castle…”

Shiro’s voice began to fade as Lance slowly tuned him out. As much as he respected the black paladin, he always struggled to stay focused during Shiro’s leaderly monologues.  They always went for too long, and were always  _ so  _ monotonous. It was like Shiro wanted him to fall asleep. 

Funnily enough, Lance was the same at the Garrison with any sort of lecture. The teachers there spoke similarly to Shiro, in a way that could make even the most interesting astrophysics lesson boring to boot. Too often did he get detention after a teacher caught him dozing off, or doodling in his notebooks when he should have been paying attention.

_ It wasn’t  _ his  _ fault drawing sharks was more interesting. _

“...’s only 0720, so you guys have time to finish breakfast and get everything sorted.” He zoned back in, blinking the blurriness from his eyes. Somehow, Shiro was still talking about the time.  _ How fun.  _ “Please come on time. Allura and I expect you all not to be late.”

Lance shrunk into his seat, avoiding Shiro’s eyes.

Was that directed at him?

_ Probably.  _

Shiro said a couple more things that he didn’t quite pay attention to (he was sure it wasn’t anything important). By the time Shiro had finished talking, Lance had already eaten all of his food goo. Pulling out his Altean-phone, he checked the time again. .

_ One hour to kill?  _

Lance knew  _ exactly  _ what he was going to do.

** ༄༅ **

Fifty-five minutes later, Lance woke up in a cocoon of blankets and pillows. He blinked a couple times to rid the sleep from his eyes, barely registering the faint chime that emitted from his space-phone. 

Yawning, Lance stretched his arms high above his head, then winced as he accidentally smacked them against the wall. He sluggishly pulled the warm duvet off of him, and fumbled to turn the alarm off. 

Unlike most times he woke up, Lance felt completely refreshed. A steady stream of adrenaline began to thrum through his veins, switching on every nerve ending and muscle. The looming mission ahead served to be surprisingly energising 

_ Man, the others are  _ suckers _ for not sleeping. _

He couldn’t help the determined grin that spread across his face. After that nap, Lance was ready for anything. 

It only took the boy a couple minutes to get up and get changed (sleeping in an undersuit did have some time-saving perks); by the time it was 0830, he had donned all of his armour and was mission-ready.   


Lance barely registered getting ready, let alone the walk to the final mission debriefing. It felt like he was going through the motions of everything, yet not  _ truly  _ paying attention to whatever he was doing. An endless feedback of  _ excitementworryanxiety  _ for the mission trapped him in his own thoughts, shielding him from the present.

Luckily, the moment he stumbled into the briefing, those thoughts melted away. 

For some unexpected reason, Lance  _ wasn’t  _ the last person there. As he scanned the room, only Shiro, Allura, and Hunk were seated around a central hologram, the others nowhere to be seen. He hesitated at the door, wondering if he should say anything, but as Hunk beckoned him over, Lance decided to take a seat right next to his best friend.

Over the next few minutes, they all made a bit of unimportant small talk. Both Allura and Shiro had been going over some final details for the mission during their free hour, while Hunk had taken to meditate in Blue. Lance was about to tell Hunk how  _ great  _ his sleep was, and how much he missed out, yet Coran’s arrival, followed closely behind by a rather sweaty-looking Keith interrupted his train of thought.

“Oi Keith!” Lance called out, making eye contact with the red paladin, “Weren’t we  _ not  _ supposed to train before any missions?” 

Keith stopped in his tracks. A second passed, then two, and then-

A surprised laugh left Lance as he was greeted by a pale middle finger. 

_ Classic Keith. _

For some reason (and Lance truly had no idea, seeing as he was under the general impression that Keith found him mildly irritating at best, and agonising to be around at worst despite their growing comradery), Keith made his way towards him, occupying the empty seat right next to him. Out of the corner of his eye, Lance saw Hunk raise an eyebrow.  _ Mood. _

It only took another half-minute for Pidge to appear, looking slightly less worse-for-wear than she did before. With her arrival (only five minutes - ah  _ shit,  _ should he be using doboshes instead? Was there even a difference between minutes and doboshes? - late), Allura began going over final details.

In all honesty, the meeting was boring. 

Really,  _ really  _ boring. Like, Garrison astrophysics lecture done by a seventy-year-old geezer levels of boredom. 

  
  
Or perhaps Lance just had trouble focusing. That could be the case; maybe he needed to speak to Coran about upping the dose of his meds. 

The next hour (varga? Was that it?) passed too fast and slow all at once. In the moment, every creeping tick seemed to trickle at a snail's pace, yet when Lance looked back on it, the meeting seemed quicker than normal.

Time was weird.

And before he knew it, Lance stood where he was almost a full twelve hours before, loitering underneath the entrance of Blue’s hangar. It was the closest one to the common rooms, allowing him to have a second to himself before having to go into her. 

Closing his eyes, he sought out comfort within Blue’s distant form, recoiling when he found nothing. No warm embrace, no sea salty sensations, nothing. Just…

...nothing.

He shivered as a cool sensation trickled down his spine, though he doubted that was from his Lion.

All too slowly, like a mouse in the face of a house cat, Lance slunk forward, keeping his gaze firmly glued to the ground. Just like the previous night Blue’s particle barrier only dissolved when he was only a meter away; it was like she could barely sense him. Just like the previous night, he made his way through to her cockpit, feeling utterly and wholly alone.

About to enter his Lion, a thought jolted his body.

_ Fuck!  _ He was supposed to go to the Green Lion! Not Blue.

_ Of course  _ he’d forget. It was the McClain Luck, after all.

With a much more brisk pace than before, Lance hurried out of the hangar, looking over his shoulder one final time in the process. The particle barrier had gone down again, yet Blue’s eyes were still alight with an eerie golden glow. 

Yet there wasn’t any time to think about that. Without any more hesitation he sprinted through the corridors to the Green Lion’s hangar (luckily, the closest one to Blue’s). It barely took any time to arrive, but once he did it was obvious that he was last. 

The Green Lion’s small (well, small compared to Blue. They were still a thirty-meter tall machine, after all) body towered over him, revealing a familiar ramp that went up though their belly. Lance looked around, seeing Shiro waiting at the bottom of the ramp, while yellow and red armour disappeared at the top; Pidge must have already gone into her Lion since it was activated.

“Good to see you here, Lance.” Shiro said as he started walking towards the man. Maybe it was his tone, or the way he worded the sentence, that made Lance flush with a sort of embarrassment.

“Sorry I’m late,” he replied, giving his signature lopsided grin. “I went to Blue’s hangar by mistake. Completely forgot.”

Apparently that was enough for his leader. Shiro nodded, then gestured at the Green Lion’s ramp. “We should get going. Allura’s wormhole should be opening in a couple doboshes.”

Like a dutiful soldier Lance complied, hurrying ahead up the ramp and into the Lion. He didn’t spare Shiro another look, nor give any more excuses. 

Walking through the Green Lion, unease prickled at his skin. Everything seemed so familiar… yet so different. Tech junk and hordes of wires replaced storage cupboards, and emerald light replaced sapphire. It was like coming home from school and finding his bedroom rearranged; his, but also not. 

The Lion’s green accents sent a glaring reflection in his visor. Lance stared at the light, watching the way it bobbed up and down as he methodically entered the cockpit, and waved to the others. Pidge had already seated herself at the helm.

From the back of the cockpit, where five makeshift passenger seats lay against the wall, Hunk crowed, “You’re finally here!”

“Damn right I am.” he replied, a smile masking his previous unease. “I can’t believe you’ve settled in without me!”

Hunk stuck his tongue out, to which Lance mirrored emphatically. 

“Alright you two, settle down.” Shiro cut into their little tongue standoff. “Take a seat, Lance. We’ll be leaving in a couple doboshes.”

Dutifully, Lance saluted. He hurriedly sat down at the end of the row of passenger seats right next to Hunk. Keith had sat himself on the other side of the yellow paladin though was busy focusing on Pidge and Shiro powering everything on to notice him. 

A phantom shock of pain shot from his hands, all the way up to his shoulder. Lance looked down, only to find his knuckles ghostly white from being clenched. Unclenching his fingers, he tried moving them out and in, trying to ignore the discomfort that lingered around his knuckles. 

Not only that, but Lance could have sworn the temperature in the Lion gradually dropped as the seconds went by. There was a persistent shiver wracking his torso, a cold sensation that made him want to jump into the shower and never come out. 

It was only once the powerboard to all of the Green Lion’s controls lit up with a lively emerald hue that he shook himself out of his weird, pre-mission funk, and began to try and focus.

_ Easier said than done.  _

_ “-ssss everyone online?” _

Lance flinched at the crackling from his comm. Shiro’s tinny voice filled his ear with the exact same noise he heard last night when he accidentally scraped a fork against a bowl of food goo. 

Nails against a chalkboard had  _ nothing  _ on that horrible experience.

His comms quietened, only to crackle up a second later. “Yup,” Keith replied. Pidge and Hunk quickly followed suit.

Their responses were painfully bland. So of course, Lance answered with a, “yes  _ sir,”  _ because Shiro of all people deserved respect. 

The heavy sigh that sounded from his comms and the way Shiro’s brows furrowed probably should have been an indication that no, Shiro did  _ not  _ want to be treated with respect.

_ “Paladins,”  _ For an interesting change, Allura’s voice decided to grace his comms.  _ “The Castle will enter the wormhole in exactly one dobosh.”  _ she paused, and then as if said in an afterthought,  _ “Hold on tight.”  _

Lance grinned. His operation to introduce the Alteans to Earth slang seemed to be working. 

His knuckles clenched around the armrests as he followed Allura’s messages perfectly. He held on tight, hell, Lance even strapped himself into the makeshift seatbelt he fashioned for all of the Lion’s passenger seats after realising there weren’t ones already.

_ Thanks, Alfor, for all those concussions.  _

Barely hearing Allura’ countdown, Lance’s body was pushed back into his seat as the Castle presumably went through the wormhole. For what seemed like vargas, but was probably only a couple seconds, he felt like he was in a limbo; gravity and seemed to both disappear, and increase exponentially. It felt as if an unknown force tried to booth pull and compress his body, opposite actions confusing every neuron. 

And then, the sensation stopped all too suddenly. The blue paladin couldn't help but let out a small groan as his mind tried to establish equilibrium. Was this how the cat in the box felt?

No matter how long he had been in space, Lance always struggled with wormhole travel. Judging by the way both Hunk and Pidge echoed his sentiment, he wasn’t the only one. 

_ “We have arrived.”  _ Allura’s voice crackled back to life through his communication system.  _ “The Noxiv fleet is on route, exactly as planned at exactly five light minutes at five-degrees ahead.” _

_ “Roger that,”  _ Pidge replied, her voice audible both on and off of the comms. Lance watched as she meddled with a couple buttons before saying,  _ “activating cloaking now, and opening the hangar doors.” _

There was a loud, metallic screech, and then they were off. 

Aside from Shiro’s occasional backseat piloting, there wasn’t much talking to keep chatter over the comms to a minimum. He and Allura were particularly anal about that, thought Lance thought it was rich coming from someone who wouldn’t shut up about Pidge’s piloting.

Though after one too many gentle ‘suggestions,’ PIdge snapped, and the comms fell silent again. And when the silence struck, Lance began to tap his foot.

Where flying five light minutes would normally take the Lions a couple seconds, Shiro had explained during their final briefing that Pidge had to pilot significantly slower to avoid debris and rocks in her path. While Hodgkin Pass was a strategically great ambush point, the sheer number of comets and other space artifacts means that it just wasn’t safe to travel faster or near the speed of light. Hence the trip took  _ way  _ too long.

Needless to say, it was also boring.

Yet once the Green Lion began to near the head cruiser, everything became a lot less boring. Pidge docked her Lion easily enough - with her cloaking it was almost  _ too easy _ . Within no time at all they were docked in a loading hangar, and ready to rumble.

Standing up from the passenger seat, Shiro turned to address the other paladins. “Remember, the cloaking on our armour only lasts for around thirty doboshes-”  _ or forty minutes,  _ Lance thought to himself, “-so we need to be quick. Keith, Pidge, Lance, you three will leave after I give the signal. Do you remember it?”

The three paladins all nodded.

“If anything goes awry, meet back here. Your lives are more important than any piece of information.”

No one argued with that. Secretly, Lance was glad that even after spending so long with the Galran Empire and their brutal ways, Shiro hadn’t adopted their whole ‘victory or death’ shtick. 

There wasn’t much to say after that. Shiro gave a hushed command to Pidge, followed by the near-silent hiss of the Green Lion’s ramp opening. 

_ It was time.  _

Shiro didn’t bother dawdling in the Lion. He - followed closely by Hunk - activated their cloaking (while invisible to the naked eye, the paladin armour allowed them to see the others even while cloaked), and hurriedly left, leaving the three paladins alone.

_ How fun,  _ Lance thought sarcastically. Every time he went to speak, a glare from Keith and/or Pidge had shut him up real fast. So, in all honesty, waiting for Shiro’s signal was pretty mind-numbingly boring. But he could stay calm, cool, and collected,  _ for the mission. _

And then, just as Lance started feeling antsy, three ear-splitting beeps sounded from his comms.

_ Shiro’s signal.  _

His lips pressed into a thin line.  _ It was time. _

“Let’s go,” Pidge muttered as she began a slow descent down the Green Lion’s ramp. He and Keith followed her, each step purposeful and careful as to not make any sounds that would give them away and destroy all advantages that cloaking had provided. Soon enough, they were out of the hangar, and making their way down the hall.

All his childhood Lance had refused to cheat in video games (board or card games were another story, though), and in all honesty, using cloaking felt like he was cheating, or at least doing something wrong. It made everything easy,  _ too  _ easy.    
  
The only thing he, Pidge, and Hunk had to do to get to the mainframe was to walk quietly and try not to draw any attention to themselves. Usually, during missions where he had to be cloaked, avoiding patrolling Galran soldiers was the hardest part - that certainly held up for this mission.

_ “Watch out,”  _ Keith hissed, pushing Lance and Pidge into a small closet room as another wave of soldiers marched down the corridor. It had been the third time that happened, in only a couple minutes.

Lance’s heart hammered in his chest as the sound of footsteps grew louder and louder. The three stood as silently as humanly possible; only one the echoes of footsteps lefts did Lance sign in relief.

“It is just me,” he muttered, “or are there more patrols than usual on this ship?”

Pidge nodded emphatically. “Way too many. Something must be going on. Or maybe they were tipped off.”

About to reply, Lance was rudely cut off by Keith pulling him and Pidge out of the storage closet, and back into the purple-lit corridor. “Less talking, more walking.” The red paladin said, a faint scowl visible behind his visor.

_ Touchy.  _ “Jeez, alright.” Lance waited until Keith’s back was turned before giving him an annoyed middle finger, before setting off and following him. 

Even though he no longer felt threatened by any of Keith’s annoyed words or threats, Lance made an effort to stay quiet after that. He knew he had issues with his volume control - for a stealth mission, shutting up was the best course of action.

Neither Pidge nor Keith made any noise after that as well, save for Pidge whispering out directions every so often. He could hear the occasional snippet of conversation from Hunk and Shiro over the paladin comms system, yet there seemed to be no immediate threat from their end.

Following the green paladin, Lance snuck down a couple more corridors, occasionally turning to avoid the endless droves of patrols. He was doing pretty well at the whole ‘sneaking around while invisible’ thing (if he did say so himself), so when Pidge made him and Keith retreat back slightly into a random room, he was a little bit confused.

“Why are we here?” Lance said as quietly as possible as he around the room. Even with the main lights off, the scant darkvision provided by his visor allowed him to make out numerous large linen boxes surrounding them. Inside, mounds of black, purple, and even white pieces of cloth lay.

Belatedly, Lance realised they must have been in a laundry room.

“Change of plans,” Pidge replied, not looking up from her tablet. “There’s too many patrols and at this rate, our cloaking will be long gone before we even reach the mainframe. So instead of constantly dodging the patrols, I have a better idea.”

She lifted a finger, pointing to the bottom corner of the room. Lance followed her finger, only to grin when he spotted a small, rectangular vent. 

_ Oh, this is going to be fun,  _ he thought. 

But of course Mr. Buzzkill had to respond. “You're kidding me,” Keith growled, “there’s no way I can fit in there.”

Seemingly not bothered to entertain his arguments, Pidge began to walk over to the vent and at the same time, rummaged through the small fanny pack that their armour carried. “Then stay. Lance and I can do it just fine without you. Feel free to stay here and guard the vent.”

A dark expression passed across Keith’s face as if he was warring with himself. Finally, his internal struggle seemed to come to an end, when he reluctantly followed Pidge to the vent. Lance swore he heard him mutter,  _ ‘if I get stuck, I’m going to kill you.’ _

Lance couldn’t help but agree.

Yet in all honesty, climbing through vents was probably easier for him than it was for Keith. His shoulders were broad enough  _ (perfect for swimming,  _ his mama had always said) to pose some problems, but other than that Lance was a string bean in every sense. Keith, however?

That boy was a bit  _ too  _ large to comfortably traverse in a small air vent.

A small crash echoed around the room, pinging metallic screeching in Lance’s ears. He turned, only to see the vent grate lying on the floor, surrounded by space screws and an Altean screwdriver. 

Lance bent down, giving the vent a critical stare. It was smaller than the ones on the Castle though only marginally so. 

“Ladies first,” he said, sweeping his hand out to Pidge. Predictably, she scowled.

“Loser,” was the only word she graced him with, before bear-crawling into the vent. Her body quickly faded into the darkness of the passageway, yet her voice carried easily. “Last one in needs to put the grate back.”

Lance’s gaze met Keith’s. There was a pause, a silent moment when nothing but friction sparked in the air, before-

“Not it!” They both shouted (well, whisper-screamed more like it. They  _ were  _ in the middle of a mission) at the same time. He shoved Keith, to which Keith shoved him back. 

It was a wrestle for who could get into the vent first, but after a well-timed kick to the back of Keith’s knees, the blue paladin reigned triumphant.

_ Suck it, Samurai.  _

There was a bit of a struggle initially to get his shoulders and waist into the vents; On his hands and knees, Lance had to manoeuvre himself in awkward ways to move forward. Thankfully, the roof of the ventilation system was just high enough for him to have room to shoot a roguish grin over his shoulder at Keith, who returned it with an annoyed frown. 

“C’mon, we have to hurry up.” Pidge’s hushed voice echoed through the vents. “There’s only seventeen doboshes left of cloaking.”

_ “Shit,”  _ Lance hissed, and then immediately corrected himself with,  _ “shoot.”  _ His mama would have given him a good old smack if she heard him swear like that. “Hey Pidge, do we have an ETA on the mainframe?”

Before answering, Pidge began to crawl forwards, only stopping at an intersection. “Three doboshes.”

_ Huh.  _ That wasn’t  _ too  _ bad.

“If we weren’t in the vents. Sorry, that was a weird place to pause in my sentence.” he couldn't see the green paladin’s face, though he liked to think she was at least a bit sheepish. “It’s seven doboshes if we crawl super fast.”

“Wel _ p.”  _ Lance said, popping the ‘p,’ “I guess it’s time to crawl super-duper fast, then.”

It’s only when static feedback blares over his comms does he realise that he’s left them on.  _ “Say super-duper again, Lance, and I will crush you.”  _

Hunk’s voice rings loud and clear, though the mirth in his tone clearly seeps through. What also seeps through is the distant sound of laser fire, something that made Lance flinch ever so slightly.

“Please do,” he barely had the chance to say before Hunk’s side of the comms abruptly switched off. 

_ Weird.  _ But he didn’t have time to focus on whatever was going on with Shiro and Hunk. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that Keith had finished screwing the grate back onto the entrance of the vent; it was time to get going.

And so, the three paladins started their descent into madness, if madness was an impossibly long and convoluted ventilation system. 

The bear-crawling really killed, especially to Lance’s knees. He promised himself a hot bath and equally hot shower when he got back to the Castle, just to rid himself of the calluses that the crawling would inevitably cause.

His dislike of their methods of sneaking around were made audible. Many times. Much to the displeasure of the others.

“I swear to  _ quiznak,  _ Lance,” Keith whispered, his voice echoing over the soft metallic clanging of their crawling. “If you complain  _ once more,  _ or don’t speed up, I will kick your ass so hard in training tomorrow.”

Lance scoffed. “Tough words coming from someone who is directly within kicking range of me.”

Kicking wasn’t even the worst thing he could do, but he didn’t want to subject Pidge to  _ that  _ particular displeasure. 

Abruptly, the blue paladin stopped crawling as he saw Pidge freeze. The vent fell silent for one tick, two ticks, and then-

Loud  _ thumps _ emitted from underneath them. It grew to a crescendo, then fell back to the wayside all too quickly. Even when the sound left, Lance’s body felt as if it was paralysed. 

“If you two don’t can it, next time a Galra battalion comes we’ll all be toast.” From up ahead, Pidge bit out. 

Bringing his hand up to a salute, Lance flinched when he accidentally hit it on the roof. Pidge turned around to give him a stink eye. “Yes, ma’am,” he murmured sheepishly. 

Without further admonishing from Pidge, they set off again, this time in (actual) silence. Well, as near as a silence they could get to - crawling through metal vents wasn’t soundless, after all. Yet soon enough, the green paladin stopped over a vent, and grinned. 

“We’re here,” she said, barely loud enough for Lance to hear. “Keith, can you pass up my screwdriver?”

Keith, who apparently pocketed the Altean screwdriver Pidge used for the first vent (and how did Lance not realise that he had picked it up?), passed it down to him, who then gave it to Pidge.  _ Like a game of telephone, but with weird space tools. _

The moment he handed it to Pidge she got to work, carefully unscrewing bolts almost without a single noise, a motion that was obviously very practised. When she eventually got the grate loose, it had barely been half a dobosh. 

“The mainframe is guarded from the outside, so we’ll have to be quiet.”

Lance bobbed his head. He could do quiet. Sure, of all the paladins he was known as the ‘loud’ one but hey, this was a mission. A very serious mission. He could stay quiet for long enough - just for the mission.

Leaning over the now vacant grate, Lance stared down at the room. To his surprise, it wasn’t filled to the brim with beeping artifacts or incomprehensible technology with inexplicably placed strobe lights. It really only looked like a normal room with standard, Galran-purple monitors lined across the wall, and a roof only three meters tall. Not that big of a deal, really.

Yet something at the back of Lance’s mind grew cold. If this was the central intelligence system of the fleets, shouldn’t there be more guards?

He didn’t want to look a gift horse in the eye nor jinx it. Yet why did it feel so… wrong?

“Ladies first?” he offered again, gesturing down towards the room.

To that Pidge derisively snorted. “Nice try,  _ Loverboy.  _ Your lanky ass can go first.”

_ Fair enough.  _ Having long legs was pretty handy when it came to dropping a handful of meters from an air vent. 

From behind them, Keith’s voice punctuated their conversation. “How are we gonna get back up, though?” The boy asked. 

Pidge rummaged through her totally-not-a-fanny-pack, pulling out a tightly woven, blue line of rope. “I found this in Coran’s room.” she smirked. “I knew it would come in handy.”

For a second, the blue paladin paused. He… he did not want to think about the implications of her sentence. No, he didn’t want to think about that rope at all. Even the thought of touching it now…  _ ugh.  _

“Let’s just get this over with.” Lance said, a tremor running through his words. He waited until Pidge tied the rope to a nearby pipe within the vents; grabbing onto it, he slowly worm-crawled his way down into the room, effortlessly landing without a sound. Pidge, and then Keith, followed suit, though with much less grace and more noise than he did.

Outstretching a hand to the various monitors, Lance whispered to Pidge, “lead the way.” She did so dutifully, walking to the middle of the room and attacking the biggest and baddest-looking monitor with a vigour reserved only for tech-nerds or people with long-lost relatives.

While she did her thing, Lance had time to look around (read: fuck around). He never particularly liked being paired with pidge on reconnaissance or information-gathering missions. That wasn’t to say he hated her (no, going on other missions with her was always an absolute blast, filled with a chaos only they could create), but right then reminded him why he disliked that particular brand of missions with Pidge.

To put it simply: whenever she did her tech magic, everyone else with her was left with nothing to do. And, well, waiting around was  _ not  _ one of Lance’s strong suites.

“How much longer do we have left?” He asked, maybe a dobosh after Pidge got to work. She didn’t spare him a single glance.

“The ship’s information and database are 23% downloaded.”

Lance frowned. “That doesn’t answer my question...?”

“25%.” Pidge said.

At that, he decided it was probably best to just shut up. She wasn’t going to give him a straight answer anyways.

But with another bout of silence falling upon the group, Lance had a compulsive urge to fill it. Not with anything interesting or excitable, really, but with anything that could get rid of the gnawing white noise that buzzed in the absence of talking. 

“So… “ he trailed off, cerulean eyes glazing over Pidge before settling on his new victim: Keith. “Keith, after this, do you wanna play some Killbot Phantasm with me?”

Said victim gave him an odd look. “Killbot... Phantasm?”   
  
“Yeah! It’s a video game that Pidge and I picked up on our first Swap Moon trip.” Lance began to ramble, “it’s like, a medieval roleplaying game where you fight monsters. And stuff.”

_ “And stuff.” _ Keith echoed. “I, uh… sure...?”

Immediately, the blue paladin’s face lit up. “Awesome!” he cried, then flinched slightly as Pidge whisper-yelled at him to  _ ‘keep it down!’  _ “My character’s a Tabaxi assassin rogue, so I think you’ll fit well as a ranger. Maybe a Dragonborn for your race, if you want to beef up your strength stats.” 

Nodding, Keith looked like he was lost in a supermarket and couldn’t find his parents (which happened to Lance one too many times when he was younger). 

“Ranger… is that an archer-”

“Done!” Cutting the red paladin off, Pidge leapt up into the air, small hands clutching what looked to be a space USB. “Everything’s downloaded. Now let’s get out of here, stat.”

Matching her enthusiasm. Lance pumped a fist into the air. “Hell yeah! Let’s go!” And without further hesitation, he made his way to Coran’s miscellaneous rope. 

The climb up wasn’t too bad, save the awkwardness of having to shuffle up rope that was a shade thinner than he was used to, yet he got up quicker than the other two. All those years of tagging along to Veronica’s aerial dancing and gymnastics lessons certainly helped. 

As they began their journey back to the Green Lion, all Lance could think about was he and Keith playing Mercury Gameflux together. Sure, it was typically a game he only played with Pidge, but recently she had been a bit, uh,  _ busy _ for him in general. All the hype around her quintessential powers drove her lust for knowledge to extreme lengths - lengths that forgot their video game playdates. (She never really seemed to forget Hunk, though Hunk was the only one who could keep up with her….

...Lance could never keep up. No matter how hard he tried.)

Though Keith, however, he wasn’t so obsessed with powers like everyone else was. That, and he was the only one with enough free time to play with Lance. And that?

That was  _ exciting. _

Thousands of character combinations ran through his head. Lance’s character had high intelligence, dexterity, and constitution, but not great strength or wisdom. Keith’s character would complement his own well if he was a tank, or someone with a high strength and enough hitpoints to survive the Bugbear boss Lance was stuck on. 

Now  _ that  _ boss was an absolute bastard which had killed Lance’s character three separate times, and managed to occupy his thoughts long enough for him to wade out of the vents without feeling tendrils of boredom crawl up against him.

“How much cloaking do we have left?” Lance asked once Pidge and then Keith had made their way out of the vent. 

“It looks like we’ve got-  _ fuck.”  _ Pidge swore, her expletives echoing around the laundry room. “Five doboshes. At most.”

_ Fuck, indeed.  _

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Keith said loudly, almost too loud, “Let’s go!”

The red paladin went to open the door, only for it to slide open by itself. Standing in the middle of the frame was a looming figure in familiar black, purple and orange armour, their large height and sword casting a shadow on the hidden paladins. 

Lance froze. 

It… it couldn’t be. There was no  _ way  _ that the figure-

But it was. 

They were the exact person who attacked the group on Yrestead, and standing behind them was another.

He didn’t remember who the other one was, yet their lizard-like tail and oddly leonine animal perched on their left shoulder emitted an aura that he positively described as threatening.

Slowly, Lance turned to Keith and Pidge with wide eyes. The three exchanged scared looks, though none of them dared to move. And then-

And then, the sword-person walked forward. Lance’s breath caught in his throat as they just  _ barely  _ missed Keith by the skin of his teeth, yet he still stood on edge once they continued to advance into the room, walking towards Pidge. 

For once, luck was on their side. Thank  _ quiznak,  _ they stopped right in front of Pidge, seemingly staring down at her. He watched as pure terror flashed across Pidge’s face, eyes gleaming in fear.

“Someone had tampered with the vents,” the sword-person said, her voice femnine yet strangely accented in a way that was not typical of the everyday Galra. They (Lance thought it was best not to assume their pronouns based solely on their voice) turned back to their friend, expression unreadable behind a tinted faceplate and bulky armour. “Notify the others. The black and yellow paladins are a distraction.”

Nodding, the lizard-person (was that a rude name? He didn’t know) turned, sauntering off to the unknown. Yet Lance, nor the other two paladins couldn’t relax. 

Adrenaline thrummed through his veins. His heart pumped in a staccato, demanding more and more oxygen the longer he waited in anticipation. For what, exactly, Lance was afraid of knowing. He could hear his blood flowing through his veins, the soft breaths that fogged up his visor, and felt nothing but anxiety for the future. 

Because the sword person  _ knew,  _ they figured out the paladin's plan! And now…

Lance barely had time to process what was happening before Pidge activated her bayard into its shock form, and rammed it straight into the person’s chest.

_ “Run!” _

Pidge’s shout drowned out the shrill  _ scream  _ from the spasming sword-person. With no hesitation Lance sprinted out of the room, falling behind Pidge. She was the slowest of the three though since she was the only one who had directions to the hangar (a bad planning move on Shiro’s end, really), he and Keith were forced to slow down.

“What did you do that for?!” Lance yelled at Pidge, his voice partially masked by the sounds of armour thumping on metal. 

Waving her free hand, Pidge gave him a dressed-looking gesture. “They were going to walk into me! What else was I supposed to do?”

If he wasn’t sprinting, he would have shrugged. “Hit them with a lethal force, maybe? What if they alert the whole ship!” But even then, in her position he wouldn’t have killed them. Even in war, killing a defenceless person while invisible seemed…  _ wrong. _

Keith growled, something low and guttural and frustrated. “No need when you guys’ screaming is definitely alerting every nearby person!”

_ Ah, shoot.  _ He  _ did  _ have a point. 

“Shiro! Hunk!” he heard Keith pant out into his comms, his breaths heavy with a growing exhaustion that Lance felt in his bones and muscles. “We’ve been found out! Get back to the Lion  _ now!”  _

There was a pause, and then- 

_ “We know!”  _ through the comms’ usual crackling, Shiro’s powerful voice shone through.  _ “Hostiles are heading your way. We’re three doboshes out.” _

Lance sped up so he was next to the green paladin. “How… how many doboshes of cloaking do we have?”

Looking down at her wrist, Pidge stumbled slightly, then immediately corrected her gait. “Two doboshes? Maybe?”   
  


That was not good. Not good at all. “We gotta go faster!”

Watching Pidge speed up as fast as her little legs could take her, Lance urged his legs to run faster, to push harder. No matter how much lactic acid built up, nor how much  _ pain  _ echoed through his muscles, he refused to slow down - refused to  _ lose.  _

Yet the run was taking the toll. Soon, all he could hear was his and his friend’s laboured breaths. As they neared the hangar, exhaustion’s slimy tentacles began to take its grip on their bodies, pulling them into its grasp. 

“H… how far away are we?” Lance asked, almost out of breath.

“Just around…” Pidge trailed off, as if she had lost her train of thought, before snapping back to reality. “...around this corner, and-  _ watch out!” _

He barely had enough time to activate his bayard before a purple-and-orange blur flew through the air, straight at him. He fired his blaster once, twice, three times, yet the blur dodged every single time. 

_ Fucker. What kind of alien could dodge bullets? _

Lance knew his reflexes were fast but they couldn’t- they weren’t fast  _ enough  _ to match the person’s agility. So when the dark-grey sword came right for his throat, all he could do was stand and watch.

And then-

A metallic  _ screech _ called from in front of him. A familiar red and white blade held strongly in front of him, it’s mullet-wearing owner standing in front of the blue paladin like a mother lion protecting its cubs.

The exchange was barely a second long. Keith held his form stronger than a brick wall, before throwing all his weight into knocking the sword-person away. Only once they were unbalanced did Lance finally rid himself of the stupor he was in, firing a stunning shot at the person’s legs. They cried out again, though fury alight their scream instead of pain. 

Pidge had already begun to rush off again “Let’s go before they can recover!” 

No sooner than she said that did both he and Keith resume their sprint. Yet from the corner of his reflective visor, Lance faintly saw their attacker get up on seemingly steady legs, and match their pace. 

There was no energy to waste for talking. The three paladins ran down the corridor, took a left, and then a right, and then-

“You’ve got to be  _ kidding  _ me,” Lance said.

There, right below the Green Lion, was Hunk and Shiro battling the  _ other  _ two masked assailants that they came across in Yrestead. 

And by the looks of it, they weren’t faring well.

Months ago, when they were still a new team, a situation like this would have been overwhelming. But now?

Now, they were (mostly) on the same wavelength.    
  
Pidge took off, sprinting to where Hunk was having a weird gymnastics-slash-wrestling fight with the soldier that had a large appendage (or ponytail? Really, who knew) on their head. At the same time Keith spun around, holding a now-flaming up in anticipation for the sword-assailant.

And Lance?

Well, he did what he did best. That being sprinting as fast as he could to the edge of the hangar and climbing up the rickety ladder that led to the small observational deck. Despite his calves and thighs burning from exhaustion, the blue paladin refused to work at anything but his best.

Closing his eyes, Lance focused on the metal of his bayard fitted perfectly within his grip. If he concentrated hard enough, he could almost  _ feel  _ a thrumming pulse from inside it, like waves hitting the shore. Light shone through his eyelids; when he opened his eyes, a long, sleek sniper rifle was in the place of his usual blaster.

He quickly took position from there; Lance dropped down to the ground, spreading his legs in an ‘L’ arrangement while simultaneously focusing the sights on his rifle. Swinging it to point at the fight below, he readied his body and placed a finger on the trigger.

One second, everything was clear. The next, the ponytail-assailant was right between the crosshairs. 

In between heartbeats, Lance pulled the trigger. 

The recoil slapped into his shoulder, sending a force down through his body. Though he barely felt it anymore, for months of specific training tended to desensitise anyone to that type of pain. Lance couldn’t help but grin as his target stumbled back with a shout, clutching their shoulder with a bloodied palm. 

It was a sick sense of satisfaction, one that he used to despise. 

Yet how could someone retain all their morals in the middle of a war? Lance was simply proud that he managed to defend his friends, no matter what the cost was.

Just like their friend, the ponytail-person quickly -  _ too  _ quickly - recovered from the blow. Too soon did they resume their ruthless attack on Pidge and Hunk, though he could see ever so slightly how they would falter and tremble more than before.

Without thinking too much more, Lance looked over his sights, and down to the battle. Both Keith and Shiro were struggling at the onslaught of their attackers - even from up high, he could hear their laboured panting, and pained cries every time a blow hit. No amount of teleporting or flames were helping. 

Lance made up his mind within a millisecond. He looked back into his sights, set the crosshairs on his target, and fired. 

The sword-person was down before he could blink. 

At the edge of the crosshair Keith gave a still-flaming thumbs up, smiling and  _ quiznak  _ Lance grinned at the adrenaline crudely mixed with satisfaction that ran through his veins. It seemed like an almost perfect shot - non-lethal, but strong enough to incapacitate. Well, that’s what Lance  _ hoped  _ it was. He was so sure that he had struck them in the thigh, and--

Something - someone - gripped the back of his neck and  _ squeezed.  _

Lance choked out something intelligible. He dropped his bayard, using his hands to claw at the iron-clad grip around his throat. Claws pressed into his jugular, causing rivulets of blood to stream down from his neck.

He couldn’t breathe.  _ He couldn’t breathe he couldn’tbreathehelphelpHELP- _

The grip lifted him up, higher and higher until his feet were kicking at air. He tried to turn his head around, to plead with whoever held him, to see who they were-

Frigid fear washed over Lance like a powerful wave. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a familiar purple-and-orange armour, accompanied by a lizard-esque tail.

_ It couldn’t be! _

He swore they were gone, a mistake that, as they lifted his body over the edge of the deck, he regretted.

And then-

And then the person let go, their hand disappearing off his neck.

And Lance couldn’t breathe. His body dropped fast, too fast, as he plummeted to the floor too many meters below.

He was gonna die.

Holy  _ quiznak  _ he was gonna die.

The floor came closer and closer and closer and  _ hewasgonnadieohfuck- _

In a flash, the scenery around Lance changed. Suddenly, he was right under the Green Lion, laying on his side right beside their paw. Shiro’s body, faintly glowing purple, cast a shadow that covered his entire body.

Shiro  _ saved  _ him.

And Lance could  _ finally  _ breathe. But his relief was short lived once he saw the livid anger that crossed his leader’s face.

“What are you doing?!” Shiro hissed, grip tightening on Lance’s arm.

“I- I don’t-”   


The black paladin released his arm, yet the fire in his charcoal eyes did not abate. “If you can’t handle yourself, stay out of the fight.”

_ What the f- _

Lance watched Shiro retreat, flinging himself back into the forays of the fight, and he couldn’t move. Shiro’s words echoed in his brain, seared into every fold and neuron.

_ If you can’t handle yourself, stay out of the fight… _

Was… did Shiro think he couldn’t handle himself?

He stood there - body still frozen, stuck in time - unmoving. Keith was now battling the Lizard-person, and tag-teaming with Shiro who resumed fighting the largest of the attackers. Pidge and Hunk were still struggling to combat the person with the ponytail, though they looked like they were struggling too.

And Lance…

He was underneath the Green Lion, alone. 

Belatedly, he realised that  _ maybe  _ he should have been helping out the others. With shaking hands Lance activated his bayard to its blaster form, and provided cover fire to whichever assailant he had a clear shot to. Yet not once did he even attempt to leave where he was standing underneath the Green Lion Why would he? 

After all, what was the point? _ I can’t contribute to this fight, so why bother?  _ He thought, too bitter for someone like him. 

“Team! Retreat back to the Green Lion!” Shiro’s yell echoed around the hangar. Immediately the paladins rushed towards Pidge’s Lion, where their ramp was already fully outstretched and ready to take passengers.

Dutifully, Lance provided cover fire, warding off their assailants as his teammates retreated. His plasma fire stayed true to his aim; every shot he hit was true. Well, true if the attackers didn’t always dodge them at the last moment.

For some reason, these people were  _ much  _ more skilled than the usual, run-of-the-mill Galra footsoldier. 

Ponytail-person tried to reach the ramp, but they weren’t fast enough. By the time the team Lance made his way up to the top of the ramp, they were still too many meters out. The ramp lifted, and with one final shot at the attackers the hangar’s light was blocked out, dawning Lance into an emerald-hued darkness.

He could hear the Green Lion’s engines rumble around him, hear the distant chatter of the other paladins and Pidge’s panic to pilot as quickly as possible. The cockpit smelled faintly of metal and earth, and the only thing he could feel was his armour and bayard, heavy -  _ too  _ heavy - a weight upon his body. 

Lance didn’t realise how heavy his breathing was until his visor began to fog up. 

He… it…

It was as if his brain couldn’t process what had just happened. Like a loading screen buffering, he struggled to comprehend if  _ that  _ actually happened. 

And by  _ that…  _

Shiro didn’t think he could handle himself. Was it because he couldn’t manipulate quintessence? Because he didn’t have awesome powers that didn’t require a bayard?

_ Why would that matter?  _ The quintessence powers were just a little extra, the icing on top of an already impressive cake. Yet the team - Shiro’s - reliance on them made him feel queasy...

“Hey, Lance,” he snapped his head back, only to spot Hunk in all of his yellow-armoured glory. “Is everything okay? You didn’t come up to the cockpit when we called.”

Lance's face fell. “You called?” 

“Yeah.” Hunk said, moving closer towards him. He didn’t  _ look  _ mad, or disappointed, or anything like the way Shiro had before, yet the blue paladin didn’t want to discount that maybe he was covering up those emotions, even though he was notorious for being open about his feelings. “Shiro mentioned that you had a pretty close call back then.”

_ ‘Close call’  _ didn’t even  _ begin  _ to cover it. “I guess I did,” he replied, voice even. “Shiro managed to save me, though, so no harm done.”

Frown lines appeared around Hunk’s face - perhaps at his blasé attitude, if Lance had to guess. “Are... are you alright?”

It was right in that moment that Lance grew sick of their conversation.  _ Screw this. _

He didn’t _want_ Hunk’s pity. He didn’t need it, either. Why entertain someone who looked down on him? 

But… Hunk  _ didn’t.  _ He was one of the only ones who treated him like an equal, and full-fledged member of the team rather than an annoyance. An inkling of fear crept up Lance’s spine.  _ Why am I thinking like this? _

“Look, I’m  _ fine.  _ Just-” his breath hitched, “-I want to go home.”

It was only when the yellow paladin’s eyes softened, and gaze turned piteous, that he realised Hunk thought he meant Earth.

For the first time,  _ home  _ to Lance referred to the Castle of the Lions - not Cuba, nor Varadero Beach. 

He wanted to puke at that.

“I know,” Hunk replied, in an understanding that only two boys a billion light years away from any of their family could ever begin to comprehend. “Do you uh, want to have a self-care night tonight? With me?”

Despite the dark, gnawing ache in his stomach, Lance managed to muster a meagre smile. “Sure, that sounds nice. Can it be a short one tonight, though? I’m pretty tired.”

Something washed across Hunk’s face - relief, maybe? The boy couldn’t tell - as he grinned back. “Awesome! We should probably get back to the cockpit now, but after debriefing I’ll meet you in my room?”

Giving a thumbs up, Lance nodded. He couldn't quite tell if he was excited or not for the self-care night. Usually, he’d love the nights where he could pamper himself any other friends that wanted to join. But everything about that day’s mission soured his excitement. 

He still couldn’t tell, not when he walked with Hunk back to the cockpit, nor when he sat down and pointedly avoided Shiro’s gaze. Luckily, he had more time to think as no one seemed to be in the talking mood. The shock of the purple-and-orange clad soldiers appearing  _ again,  _ and almost beating them,  _ again,  _ was enough to send the normally boisterous team into an echo of their former self.

It was only once they were in the Castle's range for communications did chatter finally start to pick up.

_ “Paladins, come in,”  _ Allura’s voice blared from the Green Lion’s comms, at a high enough pitch that Lance had to cover his ears.  _ “What is your mission status?” _

Shiro opened his mouth, but it was Pidge who answered. “The mission was a success. I managed to download all of the information from that fleet. I’ll be able to decrypt it when we get back to the Castle.” 

_ “Commendable work, Green Paladin, and the rest of you paladins as well.”  _ For some reason, despite the praise Allura was freely giving him (and everyone else), her words plunged Lance into a darker mood. He had no idea why agitation flowed through his veins more strongly than before; he pinched himself, hoping to knock out the foul mood he was in. Allura continued,  _ “Were there any complications?”  _

The whole cockpit stopped moving. No one said a word, only exchanging weary eye-contact (Lance had stared at Hunk’s rick brown eyes, both of them wincing), until, “There was one complication, Princess. We’ll go over that in the debriefing.” Shiro said, leader-ly as always. His tone didn’t reveal how  _ big  _ of a complication the mysterious soldiers were.

There was a pause on the Castle’s end, and Lance imagined that Allura was frowning. That was she usually did, when even the slightest thing went wrong. (He was almost tempted to give her some face creams to prevent wrinkles, since they screwed up missions so much. Though, he didn’t think that would go over that well.)

_ “Pidge, what’s your ETA to the Castle of the Lions?” _

Lance watched Pidge mess around with a couple of buttons, before a teal-coloured holoscreen popped up to the side of the control board. “Seven doboshes and fifteen ticks. We should be there at…” she trailed off, swiping at the holoscreen before continuing, “...1235 approximately.” 

_ “Good.”  _ Allura sounded surprisingly pleasant. “ _ There will be a mission debriefing at 1300 vargas. Please be on time,”  _ she said. Only ticks later did the background noise of her messages shut off, indicating that the communication line had been terminated.

Turning to Hunk, Lance nudged his best friend. “So… we’ve got 25 minutes to rest?” 

“Or shower,” he replied, nose scrunching ever so slightly. “I don’t think any of us smell that great.”

Their conversation was meant to be whispered, yet Pidge must have overheard it as she responded,  _ “Please  _ shower. I’m tired of putting up with you boys and your hygiene after a mission.”

Lance put a hand on his heart, like he had been mortally wounded. It felt like he was going through the motions of how he normally would have responded - jokingly, with too much banter - yet everything he did seemed… hollow. “Excuse me? I have the best hygiene out of any of you guys.”

To his complete and utter surprise, Keith chimed into the conversation, saying, “Lance has a point. He’s the only one here who actually, like, takes care of their skin.”

_ Heh. Suck it, Pidge.  _ “See?” He shot back to the green paladin, a bit too smugly. He didn’t even notice that Keith said something nice about him for once, until the conversation devolved into comparing each other’s (honestly pretty disgusting) hygiene habits. For just a moment, Lance could pretend that he was a teenager bickering with his friends about teenage things like bad body odour and the inappropriate use of Axe body spray, rather than face the reality that they were soldiers creating distractions to take their minds off of an almost-deadly mission.

Yet the moment ended too quickly. Seven doboshes passed, and the Green Lion began its descent into the Castle's hangar, landing rather gracefully for a hundred ton war machine. 

Unbuckling himself, Lance didn’t bother waiting for anyone else. He walked hurriedly off the Lion, putting his (very brief) experience with athletics and exactly one speedwalking race into use. By the time the others realised what was happening, he had already gone to his room, stripped off all his clothing, and seized control of the one shower stall in the paladin’s shared ‘Combatant Bathing Area,’ as Coran liked to call it.

The communal bathroom in the paladin’s quarters was basic to say the least. It resembled the Galaxy Garrison’s cadet bathroom areas uncannily, save for the Altean architecture, decreased number of stalls, and increased space.

For some reason - probably because King Alfor was an exhibitionist who didn’t know what privacy was - the showering area was open plan, except for one small stall. After missions, it was usually a race to see who could get there first and enjoy the luxury of water without a complete lack of privacy.

_ Usually,  _ being the key word. 

But today, it seemed like the others all forgot about this detail. Lance arrived in the bathrooms with his towel, a change of clothes, and a caddy overflowing with beauty products, yet no one was there. He couldn’t hear anyone outside, either. 

_ Strange.  _

He shook it off, chalking it up to everyone forgetting. And by the time he stepped under the showerhead, the warm water had already washed away any negative thoughts. 

Rather than his failure, all Lance could focus on was the water.

** ༄༅ **

By the time fifteen doboshes had passed, Lance had only  _ just  _ gotten out of the shower. 

Five doboshes after that, he had successfully dressed himself in his signature casual clothing, sans his father’s old army jacket. He focused all of his energy on the monotonous task of getting dressed - it cleared his mind and blocked any intrusive thoughts. 

So much so that he didn’t realise that someone had opened the door to the bathrooms. 

“Lance! There you are!” Lance jumped half a foot into the air in surprise. Whipping his head around, damp locks struck his forehead as he spotted Hunk right outside, standing underneath the doorway. “I came to ask, do you still want to do a self care session with me?”   
  
_ Quiznak!  _ He had completely forgotten his promise to Hunk. “Oh yeah,” Lance said, wiping his hair from out of his eyes. “For sure. Your room?”

“Yup.” Hunk responded, outreaching his hand. He gratefully took it, following his friend to his room. They walked in a comfortable silence, never once getting into the realm of awkward. 

It was only once they entered the yellow paladin’s bedroom when Lance spoke up again. 

“So…” he said, scanning the shelving until his eyes fell on a familiar pink bottle.  _ Face masks!  _ He grabbed the serum eagerly. “...what brought this on?”

  
  
Lance missed the way Hunk tilted his head, though turned back just in time to see his carefully crafted neutral expression. “What do you mean?” Hunk asked. 

“Like, you usually call a self care session when you’re feeling like shit.” Summoning all his willpower to not stare down at his shoes, Lance looked up at him, his blue eyes meeting warm brown. Hunk summoning an impromptu self care session felt just a  _ little  _ bit off. Normally  _ he  _ was the one to beg to do those types of things. The only time Hunk called one was when he had to get something off of his chest and, well, now that they were in space he had started going to Pidge for those things a bit more often. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” Hunk’s voice rang an octave higher than it usually did. “Seriously. I dunno, it’s just-”

Suddenly, the Castle’s speakers crackled to life.

_ “Paladins, please report to mission control.”  _ Allura’s voice blared through the speakers, her normally even voice tinged with something he couldn’t decipher. 

Exchanging a confused glance with Hunk, Lance shrugged. “We should probably get going,” he murmured, gently putting down the bottle of face cream onto the counter. “Face masks can wait. Allura can’t.”

Hunk sighed, though it seemed to be in good nature rather than in annoyance. “Next time we get some free time, you and I are having a self care night. I promise.”

_ Promise. _

Those were hard to keep in the middle of an intergalactic war. 

The first - and last - promise Lance made to himself in space was that he’d come back to Earth and see his family again. In his mind, he’d apologise profusely, begging on his knees for forgiveness for leaving them behind. Rachel would be mad, though Veronica and Marco would convince her otherwise. His mama and Luis would have understood. 

Yet as months- no,  _ phoebs  _ passed, that scene he had carefully constructed in his imagination seemed more like a pipe dream than a reality - a broken promise he could never fulfill. 

Hunk’s promise replayed in his mind like a broken record even after they left his room and started walking towards mission control.

_ Promises… _

When he was nine, Lance promised himself he’d touch the stars. That he’d follow in Captain Shirogane’s footsteps and travel the unknown. That he’d become the best space explorer there was. 

He couldn’t tell if he kept that promise or not. 

“You guys are finally here, thank  _ quiznak,”  _ Standing outside of mission control, Lance heard Pidge say in her usual, half-exasperated, half-anxious tone. “I managed to decrypt the info from the Noxiv fleet.” 

Her anxiety was contagious. The rest of the team (including Allura and Coran) were already inside, all in different positions yet holding the same tense air around them. Coran, Shiro, and Allura surrounded themselves around the smallest paladin who was hunched over her Frankenstein of a computer. Hunk detached himself from his side to go to Pidge, perhaps in an effort to calm her down. 

Lance didn’t follow (why bother? He always seemed to get Pidge more worked up rather than calming her), but changed his course so that he strode up to Keith, who was leaning against the wall a fair bit away from the main group.

Leaning towards Keith he whispered, “Has she said what any of the information is?”

Ever so slightly, the red paladin shook his head. “Nope. Pidge was waiting until we were all here to share.”

_ Ah. That makes sense,  _ Lance thought. Pidge  _ was  _ dramatic when it came to revealing anything. Hell, she even mastered the art of getting the Castle lights to shine off her glasses in a weird, cartoon-y effect, just for the dramatic flair.

“Are you still on for Killbot Phantasm tonight?” 

Keith hesitated. For a good moment Lance thought he would back down, but to his surprise he answered in a hushed tone, “Uh, sure.”

Unaware of Lance and Keith’s little conversation, Hunk placed a meaty hand on Pidge’s shoulder. “Is everything okay? Did you find Matt and Dr. Holt?”

Immediately, Pidge’s body deflated. A small, high-pitched noise came out of her mouth, before she could properly respond. 

“No. The, uh, intel was wrong. The Noxiv fleet was simply a reinforcement fleet for a nearby invasion. No prisoners whatsoever.” She said. Lance felt his heart go out to her; it must have been heartbreaking, thinking you finally had a chance to locate your family, before finding out that the chance never existed in the first place.

“Oh… I’m sorry, Pidge.” Hunk crouched down, wrapping his arm around her torso. Unsurprisingly she shrugged him off.

“Don’t say sorry. It’s not your fault. I just-” Pausing, Pidge took a second to clench her fists. From behind Lance could see her shoulders tense and untense like clockwork. “-never mind. But there’s other information. Stuff that you guys should see.”

She flicked a still-shaking finger up, activating a hologram in front of her. After a few button presses on her laptop, the hologram lit up with a dizzying array of incomprehensible Galran words with paragraphs so closely packed that it made Lance nauseous just looking at it. 

To the side of the hologram, a large photo of a planet was projected. It looked fairly spherical all things considered, with an Earth-like land formation on it. The side of the planet that was projected had one large land formation, surrounded by a darker shade of blue (possibly water, though with space you never knew. They had seen planets with acid oceans, and land made out of frozen hydrogen). 

“This is Lucao, or AXB-173 according to the Galra Empire. The Noxiv fleet was heading there to send reinforcements, as the planet has been under siege for around twenty decaphoebs.”

_ Jeez. You’re kidding.  _ Lance sucked in air throughed is teeth. Putting up with a Galra siege for  _ that  _ long was practically unheard of. He hadn’t come across a planet that didn’t succumb to the Galra in more than a decaphoeb or two. 

As if they were on the same wavelength, Keith voiced a similar thought. “That’s impossible. How have they survived for so long?”

Turning around to face him, Pidge’s face brightened up. Her eyes gleamed in the same cunning way that Lance saw whenever she came across a new, exciting piece of technology.    


“Lucao is home to one of the most advanced planetary defence systems in the known universe. Apparently, they have a planet-wide barrier that has so far shielded them from most attacks.”

On cue, the hologram changed to a close-up image of the planet. In the atmosphere, transparent interlinked hexagons formed a protective barrier around the planet. Even though the photo was blurry and only in one colour, he could tell how impressive it was.

Expecting Shiro or Allura to interrupt, Lance was surprised as Pidge continued, “But get this. The barrier isn’t technically physical technology. It’s created from  _ quintessence manipulation.” _

Those two cursed words were all that it took for the temperature in the room to skyrocket. Keith surged off the wall, body rigid. The others had a similar reaction - both Shiro and Hunk stared at Pidge with a determined and interested expression. Even Allura, who kept a regal control on her facial expressions during most briefings, visibly widened her eyes. 

“Turns out, one of the reasons that the Galra are so hellbent on conquering Lucao is that a large portion of the Lucains-” the hologram flickered again, this time to show a humanoid figure with digitigrade, almost goat-like legs, fur from the back all the way to their head and three sets of protrusions on the side of their head. If Lance looked closely he could see how the figure had three, milky-white eyes that seemed to stare straight at him. “-have a limited ability to manipulate the quintessal energy around them. It’s something very similar to what we can do.”

Ducking his head, Lance looked at his feet, focusing on the scuff marks on the lip and the rayed cream shoelaces, rather than Pidge and the team’s excitement. 

He wished he could share it, he really did. But…

_ If you can’t handle yourself, stay out of the fight! _

...this was only a reminder that he  _ couldn’t  _ do what the others’ could.

“That’s… that’s  _ crazy,  _ Pidge!” Hunk beamed. “We totally need to help them out! And then, maybe they can help us out with our powers!” He shared a conspiratory grin with the green paladin. 

“Ability to manipulate quintessence,” Allura corrected Hunk, though she too looked electrified at the prospect of others aiding the paladins in their lessons. Lance knew that the princess was overworking herself with her duties to the Castle, missions, and lately, teaching quintessence manipulation to four of the five paladins. Too many times did he run into her in the middle of the night, half-asleep and eyebags darker than the void of space.

Stepping forwards, Keith commanded everyone’s attention. “Should we help them, though? Why are they even being attacked?”

_ Because the Galra are assholes,  _ Lance said to himself, before also piping in, “Yeah! Helping sounds great and all, but do they even need our aid? Aren’t there other planets that need it more?”

To that, Hunk had no response. Neither did Allura, though her furrowed brows indicated that she was mulling it over. 

“Well, according to the pilot logs from the head Noxiv fleet ship, the Empire is attacking on behalf of Haggar.” Pidge finally answered; a jolt of pity ran up Lance’s spine as he saw Shiro visibly flinch at the name. “It didn’t say why, but I…”

“-She wants to know how to extract quintessence forcefully without killing the host.” The black paladin interrupted. His mouth was pressed in a thin line, the only other indication that the name affected him to such a degree. “That’s, um, what she was trying to do with a couple of prisoners in the area.”

  
  
Shiro didn’t expand, nor did anyone ask him to. Only since he unlocked the ability to manipulate quintessence did Shiro finally begin to remember more and more of his time in the Galra arenas, rather than brief flashes. (One night Lance called Hunk, Pidge, and Keith into a meeting, and they all came to an agreement that they would help Shiro without prying as much as possible.)

_ Of course the witch would want to conquer a planet just to experiment on its people.  _ Aside from making fearsome robeasts and attacking Voltron with weird bursts of lightning that quite literally sucked the life out of them, Haggar’s favourite activity seemed to be destroying planets for their quintessence.

“Then we must help.” Allura said resolutely, drawing Lance’s attention off of his leader. “Their ability to create quintessal barriers will be a large asset to the Coalition.” 

Speaking up for the first time, Coran added, “They also might be able to help strengthen all you paladins’ abilities! From what I’ve seen, you definitely need some help.”

The blue paladin’s stomach bottomed out. Coran’s support felt like the final nail in his coffin. 

_ Of course  _ his McClain Luck would bite him in the ass. Not only were they going on  _ another  _ mission (and  _ dios, _ he didn’t want to go on another mission for years. What if the same thing happened? What if he messed up again?), it was to aid a species that could do the one thing Lance would  _ kill  _ to do. The one thing that everyone else was better than him at.

The only thing that made him useless as a paladin.

“Great. Let’s get some sleep tonight, and in the morning we’ll start to plan a mission to defend Lucao and get them to join the Voltron Coalition.” Shiro spoke, hard and dependable yet to Lance it was akin to a priest at a funeral. 

Once again Allura picked up from where Shiro left off, tag-teaming the mission briefing in a confident way. “Black and green paladin, please stay back. We’ll go over more information tonight. The rest of you all,” her gaze swept over him once she glanced at Hunk and Keith, “go get some sleep. We’ll meet at 0900 tomorrow in this room to discuss an upcoming Lucao mission.”

Lance couldn’t find it within himself to be happy at the prospect of sleeping in. He… 

What if the mission highlighted how  _ behind  _ he was compared to the others? Shiro must have picked up on it, but the others hadn't. Keith and Hunk still treated him like normal (if a bit better, in Keith’s case), while Pidge’s teasing didn’t extend to any of those sore areas.

Yet what if…. If the Lucains joined the Coalition? What if they helped the others with their weird quintessence powers? 

What if Lance was left behind.  _ Again.  _

He didn’t want to think about that. 

When Shiro dismissed them all, he pushed past Keith, not waiting on anyone else. He couldn’t find the energy to go to Blue and rant. Her connection to him felt like a spider’s web, flimsy and paper-thin. Lance didn’t want to reach out, in fear that she wouldn't answer.

The other Lions, they all responded when their paladins were in danger. He almost  _ died  _ today and Blue…

...she didn’t say a thing.

And so, Lance ran through the corridors. Past his room, where a dark, empty bed greeted him, ast the elevators down to the hangars, where a silent companion lay, and all the way to the forgotten greenhouse.  _ His  _ forgotten greenhouse.

Well, not forgotten anymore. He was there; he revived the plants and cultivated new ones. Hands shaking, he tried to focus on his plant family. Veronica looked perfectly healthy as always, though the slight wilt to Marco next to her meant that Lance probably needed to up the amount of water he used when watering them. Luis also had a similar wilt, though his was more pronounced. 

It was fine. Just a bit of water, a bit of care, and they could go back to normal. (Just like him.)

But then, his eyes caught onto Rachel.

Where her half bulb of pastel flowers usually stood, new buds had begun to grow in the empty space. Yet the new buds were bigger, darker,  _ foreign.  _ The empty space had been  _ replaced. _

_ No…  _

It was just a stupid plant - the flowers meant nothing. But it was his family, in a way. His sisters and brothers and mother were all there, not in the flesh but in spirit. Yet the sight of their delicate petals and pungent floral odours did nothing to ease the frantic anxiety that festered within him.

And surrounded by blooming pinks and purples, Lance sunk to the ground, cradling the flower. _ Alone.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he he he. ho ho ho >:)  
> Bonus points to anyone who recognises the chapter name/what it means. If you haven't notices, all my chapter names are somewhat... foreshadowing.
> 
> Okay you cannot convince me otherwise. Lance is one of those dudes in high school that responds to all the teachers that he likes with year sir/ma'am, and all the teachers that he doesn't like with their first names. Him saying 'yes sir' to Shiro is canon.
> 
> Ngl I kinda hate this chapter but alas. I'll reread it in the morning and fix any mistakes. Next one will be a lot more fun.
> 
> Also, I haven't tagged it but in this fic, Lance has implied ADD. Why? Because I tend to write things as how I would respond and I may or may not have it sooooooooo. We stan accidental projection. But on that, Lance's POV will be written differently than Keith's POV (which may or may not be making an appearance later in the fic), as I also want to write narration that seems in character, if that makes sense?  
> Yeah this chapter was beta'd by Shark but also I wrote most of this at 2am so like. Pls forgive me for any mistakes/plot holes/dumb bitch energy.
> 
> LASTLY, ik everything seems a bit slow rn, but hopefully next chapter is when things change place a little bit. You'll be meeting a new, yet familiar face, and going to a cool new place. I wonder what will happen....
> 
> Thank you for reading, and feel free to tune for the next chapter coming soon! If you want to see more content from me, you can follow me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/ashkazora) and [twitter!](https://twitter.com/azorashka)
> 
> As always, if you liked this chapter, please leave a comment and kudos! See ya next time! <3

**Author's Note:**

> YEEHAW THAT IS IT. That's chapter one. Okay since it's the end notes, here are a couple things:
> 
> \- my update schedule for this fic is 'fuck around and find out.' As you can see from the first chapter, my chapters will be long and take longer to come out rather than shorter but have less time between chapters. So please excuse me if there's time between chapters.  
> \- That being said, I will NOT abandon this fic. Even if it takes me a while to get out chapters, I refuse to let this baby stay unfinished.  
> \- This is inspired by The Umbrella Academy (2019 Netflix show, and some parts of the comics as well). Though it mostly will explore one particular storyline. You do not need to watch the show to understand this fic. For all those people who are familiar with TUA, I'm sure you'll know which character and which storyline this is inspired by ;)  
> \- If there's spelling errors or other mistakes in this chapter, please let me know! I'm editing these chapters mostly on my own and sometimes I miss things :,)  
> \- This fic is also platonic klance but if you want to interpret it as romantic then go ahead. What am I gonna do, stop you?  
> \- This chapter's format was also inspired by the first episode of TUA s1. So let's pretend Lance is playing a version of Phantom of the Opera (?) on the guitar and not like, despacito or something.  
> \- Fun fact: the mission beefing was supposed to be in this chapter but I didn't want to make it any longer, so it's been moved to the next chapter. On that note, the next chapter probably won't be as thicc. Sorry about this 15k worth of nonsense.  
> \- I've had this idea stewing in my brain for a year and a half and writing it? It feels good. So buckle up boys because the rest of the fic is gonna be fun :)
> 
> So yeah! Thank you for reading, and feel free to tune for the next chapter coming soon! If you want to see more content from me, you can follow me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/ashkazora) and [twitter!](https://twitter.com/azorashka)
> 
> As always, if you liked it, please leave a comment and kudos. See ya next time!


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